Our Bodies, Ourselves

A Human Being, A Divine Person

Now, we know only three kinds of persons exist: the three uncreated Persons of the Godhead, and the two kinds of created persons — angels and men. In order to understand why we get our bodies back on the Day of Last Judgement, we first have to understand what it means to be us. What are we? What is a human person? More important, why are we human persons?

The question is interesting because the answers are not as obvious as they seem. One of the first people to deal with the question was a man named Nestorius. He said, “Look, the Church teaches that Jesus is fully human. He has a fully human body and a fully human soul. Therefore, He must be a fully human person. But, He is the Son of God, so He must be a Divine Person as well.” It seemed pretty logical — according to Nestorius, Jesus was two persons at once. The human person and the divine Son of God, both united in one body, sort of like a split personality, only in a good way.

When Bishop Nestorius proposed this to the Church and began teaching it to his flock, other bishops objected. An ecumenical council of the Church was called to decide the issue. By the end of the council, Nestorius found he was wrong, his idea was heretical. The council agreed that the apostolic teaching was this: there is only one Person in Jesus Christ — while He is fully and completely man, while He is fully and completely a human being, He is not a human person. He is the Divine Person, the Son of God.

Well, that’s quite a poser, isn’t it? How can you be fully man, fully a human being, but not even the teeniest bit a human person? It seems impossible, until we remember one thing: the Three Persons of the one God are distinguished only by their relations and we human persons are made in His image. This is how it works.

God is pure spirit. He does not have a body. Thus, the Three Persons of the Godhead are pure spirit. The angels are made in God’s image in at least three ways. First, they are pure spirit, like God. Second, their intellects are enormously powerful. They are so knowledgeable about the results of their own actions that they can see the furthest consequences of everything they choose to do. For this reason, their decisions are irrevocable: they know full well what they choose when they choose it. In that, they are like God too. Third, each angel is a distinct person.

But we humans, we are not pure spirits. How are we like God? Well, we image Him by the fact that we are persons. We also image Him in another way. Unlike the angels, who have no bodies and cannot generate new angels, we can generate, we can beget families. In this, we are uniquely like God. God the Father begets the Son, the Father and the Son generate the Spirit. God is a family of persons whose life is love. In fact, the three persons of the Trinity are so closely intertwined in love that each Person can be distinguished from the other two only by these relations of begetting and generation. Father begets Son, Son is begotten of Father, Father and Son together generate Spirit, Spirit is generated by Father and Son.

If it were not for these Divine Relations, there would be no Divine Persons. That’s how important relationship is to being a Divine Person. If relationship is that important for God, it is likely to be pretty important for us created persons as well.

Personally Yours

So, what is it about angels and men that makes us persons? Well, think about what is unique about us. Only angels and men are called to intimate communion with the Three Divine Persons of the Godhead. Only angels and men are called to be part of God’s family. Nothing else is. Birds, ducks, dogs, giraffes — all of these may appear in the new heaven and new earth that comes after the Day of Last Judgement, but none are called to personal intimacy with God. We are persons because we are called to be in communion with the Divine Persons.

“Communion” means total gift of self. Each Person of the Trinity gives of Himself so fully that each Person of the Trinity totally interpenetrates the other two Persons. What does that mean? It means that no matter which Person of the Trinity you are thinking of, the other Two Persons are totally contained within Him. Each Divine Person makes Total Gift of Himself to the other Two, each gives Himself totally away to the other Two, holding nothing back.

The angels who rebelled chose to hold something of themselves back. This withholding of self was enough to prevent each fallen angel from entering into communion with God. They are called to communion — they are persons — but their personhood can never attain the full glory it is meant to have simply and only because they chose to reject full communion with the First Persons, the Trinity. They knew the consequences. They chose to be less anyway.

God made each human a unique composite of body and soul. Pope John Paul II says “Man is a person in the unity of his body and spirit. The body can never be reduced to mere matter. It is a spiritualized body, just as man’s spirit is so closely united to the body that he can be described as an embodied spirit.”

The soul is the form of the body. If the body were made of Jell-O, the soul would be like the plastic mold Jell-O is poured into. It holds its shape only while the temperature is right and the mold is there. Put the Jell-O on the table and pop it out of the mold: what happens? It gradually loses its shape, disintegrating into the original formless goo. The same will happen to my body when the soul is separated from it at death. My body will disintegrate. That is death: the separation of body and soul, matter and form, Jell-O and mold.

But we human persons are called into total communion with God. Total communion. That means we have to give Him everything we are if we want to be fully human persons. Death is the separation of soul and body, and death was never what God intended for us. Since we are body and soul, since body and soul were meant to be joined forever, we must give Him everything we are. Our bodies are necessary to our personhood because they are part of what we give to God. We get our bodies back at the Day of Last Judgement precisely so we can give ourselves totally away to God, just as Mary gave herself totally to God when Gabriel asked her the question, just as Jesus gave Himself totally to us on the Cross.

Body: The Instrument of the Spirit

And this is why Jesus is not a human person even though He is a human being in every other respect. He is a human being, fully man, because He has a fully human nature and gives Himself entirely to God, as human beings are called to do. Christ is one Person (remember where Nestorius went wrong) and a person is defined by his relationships. We know that Christ is the Divine Person, the Son of God — not a human person — because of the kind of relationship He has with God, a relationship infinitely superior to our own. He is God, after all. He is already totally contained within the other two Persons of the Trinity — something that we will never accomplish. We will be in communion with God in heaven, but never that level of intimate communion that the Son has. He possesses the one Divine Nature, we only share in it. He owns it; through the grace of the sacraments, we only dabble our fingers in it. He is the Divine Person, the only-begotten Son of God, we are only created human persons.

At the Last Supper, the God who is simultaneously present at every moment of time and space made Himself especially present in His resurrected body. He chose to take a body at the Incarnation and He chooses to keep His human body and human nature even now, because He wants us to understand what a precious gift our body is. Our bodies are part of who we are, and if we did not have them, we would not be everything God intends us to be, we could not give Him everything we are. Those who are in heaven right now are not as happy as they will be when they get their bodies back, because when they receive their bodies back, they will have more to give Him and will be able to give themselves even more thoroughly.

As Catechism article #367 tells us, this is, in part, what Scripture means when it speaks of “spirit” — the “spirit” is simply the soul elevated beyond itself, achieving the highest communion with God that it can attain. In a certain sense, the soul’s elevation depends upon the body’s presence because the body was always meant to be joined to the soul. “Spirit” is the soul’s vocation, as it were. For instance, my name is “Steve,” but my vocation is “husband” and “father,” because that is what the sacraments have empowered me to be while I am alive here on earth. Similarly, the soul is the life-force, the form, of the body, but the soul’s vocation is “spirit.” My soul is called to be elevated to eternal communion with God, and my glorified body is meant to be the instrument through which my communion with God takes place.

That is why God took on a body. He took flesh so we could triumph over Adam’s Fall. He held His own resurrected Body in His hands at the Last Supper so we could hold His resurrected body in our arms in heaven.

This Triduum, think on these things.

This column is adapted from material in Sex and the Sacred City Copyright Steve Kellmeyer, 2004

Steve Kellmeyer is a nationally known author and lecturer, specializing in apologetics and catechetics. His new book on the Theology of the Body, Sex and the Sacred City is now available for on-line or phone ordering through Bridegroom Press as are his other books, audio recordings and teaching tools. If you would like to comment on his columns or other writings, please visit www.skellmeyer.blogspot.com .

Subscribe to CE
(It's free)

Go to Catholic Exchange homepage

MENU