From a metaphysical point of view, for anything - other than God - to 'be', and to know itself, must comprise a body - must comprise something of which the knower can identify as itself, and in so doing identify what is other-than-itself.
This 'body' does not have to be material - it may well be spiritual or angelic - but it is not all that there is, and it is conscious of the fact that there is other-than-itself.
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The Jewish belief sees no radical distinction between body and soul - the former is the material form of the latter - and to be human is to be this psychodynamic entity of spirit, soul and body ... ancient Jewish belief was that when the person died, the soul/body dynamic was broken and the soul, devoid of any means of experience, entered Sheol, a limbic state akin to coma, until the general resurrection at the end of time.
The Greeks, and others, posited a soul distinct from and separate to the physical body, and in their systems and eschatologies the body - and by extension the material order, cosmos and universe - always was of no consequence and disposable. To many its very existence was an evil.
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The Christian was faced with these two philosophical trends. Following their Hebraic root they rejected the notion of a soul 'trapped', 'imprisoned', 'enfleshed' or otherwise in a body - soul and body; spirit and matter, come into being as one dynamic being, willed by God.
The eschatalogical problem is then this:
If the material domain of the created order is 'good' as God decreed at each stage of creation, and if man, His culminating act, is 'very good' - then if the soul alone survives the death of the body, what survives is metaphysically and philosophically lesser than what preceeded it - a 'perfect' disembodied soul falls short of the perfection of Adam and Eve as they were conceived and created. It has no place nor part in the material order other than to watch over it.
St Paul alluded to this when he said we shall sit in judgement over angels. How can that be, if angels are perfect? Only if the perfect human is perfect in body, spirit and soul - a perfection that is above the angelic, in that angels are perfect in spirit and soul only.
Metempsychosis, the transmigration of souls from one body to another, does not sufficiently address the problem - for if 'we' live many lives, then the core of the person is necessarily devoid of every human trait, those traits and characteristics, from gender down, which define who we are, and which psychology is showing, with ever greater detail, cause us to be who we are, are likewise relegated to the transitory, being of no value and disposable and discarded.
in short 'you' do not survive death, only the principle of life itself goes on...
St Paul again speaks of the resurrection as a mystery beyond human understanding - as we shall be raised perfected souls, we shall be raised perfected bodies, bodies unlike that which we now have, and 'our' relationship with our bodies will be utterly different than how we perceive ourselves now, as contained within - in that time our bodies will be our 'projections', in a material form in the material order, according to our desire?
The one fact of our bodies today is that we are seen, and we have no say over how we are seen (disguises of cosmetic surgery aside - superficial stuff anyway) - but in that time we will be seen only to those we wish to reveal ourselves, perhaps ... as Christ was seen but not recognised after His resurrection, unless He wanted it so?
Something to think about?
Thomas
