Hi Dondi –
"Therefore this is the literal meaning of the text; but if we look to the real meaning, then the garment of skins is a figurative expression for the natural skin, that is to say, our body;"
Clement of Alexandria, St Augustine, St. Basil the Great and St Gregory of Nyssa, St Gregory the Great, the Venerable Bede, Hugh of St. Victor ... even to the great Scholastics of the High Middle Ages, Peter Lombard, Blessed Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas, the literal view of the Hexaemeron prevailed over the speculative.
Even so, that the Fathers appear undecided or deliberately ambiguous on certain scriptural issues, the duration of the creational day for example, is not so much a measure of uncertainty but audience. St Basil the Great, the author of that first Hexæmeron, delivered his homilies to an audience of ordinary folk, and prefaced his second book thus, "In the few words which have occupied us this morning we have found such a depth of thought that we despair of penetrating further." He was well aware of sowing confusion and doubt in the heart of the believer, and to believe in something it is not necessary to understand it.
The first, and inarguable thesis of the JudeoChristian Tradition is that man was created a body. Two texts (among a host of others) support this thesis –
"... fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and all living creatures that move upon the earth ..." (1:28)
"And the Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth: and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul." (2:7)
In both cases there are references of seed and fruit as food, so in both Genesis 1 and 2 it would seem man is created a physical being in a physical world.
I might also add that without a body, its 'instrument of presence' – the disembodied intellect as such is not present 'in' the world – the pure intellect (angel) can witness, but it can not and will not participate, except under the most unusual circumstances.
"for God, when first of all he made the intellect, called it Adam; after that he created the outward sense, to which he gave the name of Life. In the third place, he of necessity also made a body, calling that by a figurative expression, a garment of skins;"
Now one could tackle Philo Judaeus, but I'd have to read further. There is an implication that the intellect is Adam, not the whole person, and this would seem to indicate an overt Platonic style of thought, and not JudeoChristian, the implication being that the body is a contingent mode of being of the intellect Adam, which in essence does not require a body ... and I would have to explore Philo's thinking a lot further before accepting that premise.
Origen (2nd c.) fell somewhat under the same error in speculating (he never offered it as anything other than a speculation) the pre-existence of the human soul, outside and above the body, as it were. He did not, as is so often asserted, infer metempsychosis or reincarnation by so doing). This was a fundamental error that was corrected by St Maximus (6th c.) when the latter 'Christianised' Platonism and in so doing solved some of the intractable problems that Plato himself was obliged to acknowledge (if every thing has its 'idea' which is its perfection, then Plato acknowledged there must be a 'perfect disease', which contradicted his idea of 'the good').
"for it was fitting that the intellect and the outward sense should be clothed in a body as in a garment of skins; that the creature itself might first of all appear worthy of divine virtue; since by what power can the formation of the human body be put together more excellently, and in a more becoming manner, than by God? on which account he did put it together, and at the same time he clothed it; when some prepare articles of human clothing and others put them on; but this natural clothing, contemporary with the man himself, namely, the body, belonged to the same Being both to make and to clothe the man in after it was made." (my emphasis)
Here Philo seems to head off any erroneous reading of the text, by asserting that the body was made 'contemporary with' or at the same time as the intellect, so if I have read this extract right, he in fact did not stray off course.
However, I might add that reading your link, Philo does seem to indicate two men, the physical, "so that the temperament of his nature was combined of what was corruptible and of what was incorruptible. But the other man, he who is only so in form, is found to be unalloyed without any mixture proceeding from an invisible, simple, and transparent nature."
(my emphasis)
So again Philo seems to signify 'man' as being something non-material, that is combined with the material ... so what is the difference between human and angel, and why? In short, I think Philo is thinking more along Hellenic dualist rather than Hebraic holistic lines, and falling into their speculative error.
But again ... I would have to read further.
Finally, I might add that intellection is not a quality that belongs to human nature alone, as angels also have powers of intellection. So the intellect does not 'belong to' nor define the human as such, and one is not human because one has an intellect. So the intellect is a meta-human quality and is not in that sense Adamic, whereas all humanity shares in the Primordial Adamic nature, and thus the Fall. In the Latin tradition this participation in Adam's wounded nature is active, Adam sinned and man sins (thus ontologically the first sin resides in Adam and man participates in that); in the Orthodox this participation is passive, man suffers the consequence of Adam's sin, but is not guilty of it. The two views are quite distinct, but even Orthodox commentators have admitted that there are certain flaws within the Orthodox reading – why does God punish those who are not guilty? We do not punish the wife and family of a criminal, even though they do suffer as a consequence ... but this is a digression.
Frithjof Schuon referred to the intellective (as opposed to 'intellectual' which is a profanity) capacity as something 'naturally supernatural, or supernaturally natural' in man.
Thomas
