TH121 E RESPONDING TO GOD’S CALL BY BECOMING

FULLY HUMAN

Part II: WHO ARE WE TODAY OR WHERE ARE WE TODAY?

Chapter 5: Body and Soul: The Virtues of Self-Care and Integrity

Objective: After this lesson, the student is able to explain the unity of body and soul and appropriate in
one’s practices the virtues of self-care and integrity as pangangatawan ng loob.

Introduction

In the previous chapter we reflected on human freedom as God’s gift to us. What is very
important to remember is that our being human embodies and expresses God’s life and love in this world.
“The real freedom,” thus, “is what God most intensely desires and is its greatest good” (Sachs, 27). If
there is anything that God desires for us, it is that we share in His/Her goodness and live in a loving
relationship with ourselves and with other created beings of this world. Freedom is from God and for
God. Freedom is not so much about the rights of private individual persons as it is about our capacity and
responsibility to become God’s desire of a loving person for others. This loving relationship begins with
our selves.

The purpose of this fifth chapter is to continue to reflect on how our fundamental option towards
goodness, that is, to be good persons, relates to how we see and regard our own selves. For it is with our
body and soul, in their totality or oneness, that we are able to exercise our freedom towards other people.

Let us “SEE”

A. What We Do With Our Body?

Name : __________________________________________________
Time : __________________________________________________
Date : __________________________________________________

Seatwork: Fill up the questionnaire below with short answers.

List down five (5) “good” things that you do to your body or parts of your body. Please be specific by
citing behaviors:
1)
2)

3)
4)
5)

6) [This number 6 is about a “good” thing you do to your body but you may not want to write down for
any reason. Keep in your thoughts but think about it.]

List down five (5) “bad” things that you do to your body or parts of your body. Please be specific by
citing behaviors:

1)
2)
3)

4)
5)
6) [This number 6 is about a “bad” thing you do to your body but you may not want to write down for
any reason. Keep in your thoughts but think about it.]

Dyad or Big-Group /Class Discussion: Look at your six responses on the “good” and “bad” things
you do with/to your body.

a) Why do you consider these as “good” and “bad”? When you do the “good” things to your body,
what are their effects on you as a person? How about the effects of the “bad” things on your
person?

b) Now, think of the number 6 of the “good” things you do with your body but did not write down.
What is the effect of this on your person? How do you feel about the kind of person you are
becoming when you do this “good” thing”? How is it affecting your relationship with other
people? Why did you not write it down?

c) Think of the number 6 of the “bad” things you do with your body but did not write down. What
is the effect of this on your person? How do you feel about the kind of person you are becoming
when you do this “bad” thing? How is it affecting your relationship with other people? Why did
you not write it down?
B. The Fragmentation of the Self: The “Cult of the Body

Modern societies and cultures are experiencing an alarming tendency towards the human self.
This is the obsession with the body detached from the spirit or the soul. A phenomenon is increasingly
cutting across all social classes (rich and poor), genders (male and female), and age-generations (young
and old) can be described as the “cult of the body.” This refers to the preoccupation of the individual to
glamorize, worship and glorify one’s body to sacrifice everything for its sake, to idolize physical
perfection and social acceptance at being:

 “aesthetically beautiful” (all parts of the body, particularly its muscles, are proportionate),
 “cinematographically spotless” (with celebrities as models who are white-skinned, slimmed
or toned, and flawless body), and
 “forever young” (obstructing growth and aging to look always young and healthy).

Mass media, particularly commercial propaganda, exploit the modern obsession with the body
through all sorts of products and programs that transform the body from its naturalness into artificiality.
They range from soap, lotion, colored eye contact lenses, hair dyes, nail polish, facial wash and clothing
fashion, to work outs in fitness gyms, slimming centers, facial treatment clinics, spa and massage therapy
clubs, to the more sophisticated (and expensive) dermatological embellishment, botox treatment and
cosmetic surgery.

To make the glorification of the body more public, the facebook, twitter and other cyberspace
social networks have become the vehicles of self-promotion, particularly in posting touched-up (or photo
shopped) photographs of attractive (and alluring) poses and “selfies”. Particularly the selfies or large or
close-up facial photos are presented as if the person is spilling over your computer monitor or crawling
into your spatial territory for you to look closely and to appreciate.

There is nothing wrong in making use of any of these products and programs for the promotion of
good health and a better integration of mind-body-spirit. What is disturbing however is when the body
alone replaces and defines one’s identity. The ideology or false consciousness behind the cult of the body
is not obvious but it is powerfully changing one’s way of looking at the self, life, and the world. By “false
consciousness” we mean that there is something hidden or not said about the true state of affairs or true
reality. Some of the features of the ideology of the cult of the body are the following:

1) Individualism – The cult of the body promotes and nurtures individualism. The individual
person is the sole artisan of one’s life, the measurement of happiness and the achiever of one’s
destiny. There is no need for other people to help the individual because he or she believes that
being beautiful and good is subjective or according to one’s standards. The interests of the
individual take precedence over the community or a social group. Accordingly, the individualist
lacks active concern for larger social questions or issues because these are seen abstract or too
removed from the individual whose principal concern is to be “different” from people who have
difficulties and problems of living.

2) Narcissism – The word narcissism came from Narcissus in Greek mythology who fell in love
with his own image reflected in a pool of water. Today, the word is used to describe the pursuit of
gratification from vanity or egoistic admiration of one’s physical or mental attributes which also
advances arrogance and pride. The cult of the body has this underlying thinking that one’s body is
all that matters to define a person’s beauty and goodness. Psychologists say also that narcissism is
the inability to tune in emotionally to other people. This is the lack of empathy and what causes
 great damage in relationships. Because the individual is engrossed with one’s own imaging or
self-marketing, he or she cannot participate effectively in the struggles of other people.

3) Self-fragmentation – The privileging of body has a double effect of distancing from one’s self.
First, the totality of the body itself is broken up into different parts, such as muscles, face, hands,
feet, etc. Unless one goes for a complete transformation, for most people they remedy separate
parts, accent a few and hide many. Second, the thinking that the body is what counts most
conceals one’s intentions, motivations, feelings, fears or anxieties. The body and inner self are
distantiated or separated from each other with the external façade projected as the “true self.”

4) Commercialism – The truth is, the big winners in the cult of the body are the businesses that
create another or a different image of the person based on the products and programs they sell.
The individual person becomes the conduit of a culture, both by patronizing the commodities and
by making oneself also commodities to be consumed by the public. The principal victims of this
commercialism are the women for the media world of marketing is making them objects of
consumption by the male-dominated macho society.

5) Blurring of Visions of “Good” and Bad” - Distinctions between “good” and “bad” have
become blurred. With the role of the community fading to the background and the individual at
the foreground in the cult of the body, there is now a reinvention, almost a fantasizing, of
“goodness” that comes only with the exterior self, that is, the body as the outward appearance.
The basis of evaluation and judgment is the self insofar as other people or events affect the body.
Icons do exist in the cult of the body. These are movie personalities or other celebrities who
project perfect bodies, even if in real life those kinds of people conceal many things in their
private lives. Thus, they become idols in two senses: their idealized public body and their
covering up of their “ugly” sides.

6) Life and History in a Linear Fashion – Life and its history is seen in a spectrum of continuity,
with no interruptions, ruptures, blemishes, and ugliness. The goal or the “end” is only for
achievers and the victors who perfected one’s body. The body can be rationalized through self-
control (“the pain of ugliness must be resolved or removed by feeling good about the body”),
calculated or controlled (one is always on the lookout for any disintegration of parts of the body,
and treatments can be calendared), made efficient (with money as resource, one can attain fame
and power with a beautiful body), and output-oriented (“What is important and necessary is to
achieve the ideal of beauty and goodness, and not to look back at the past but only to the future”).
There is no room for surprises, mistakes, discontinuities and for a cause larger than one’s self.

7) A Body without a Spirit or Soul – Probably the root of the ideology of the cult of the body, this
feature of the cult of the body means that there is no strong accountability to one’s body in
relation to the inner spirit or soul. This is expressed in the statement, “I have a body.” The body
is an object, lotion-painted or machine-enhanced, which can be utilized, used or misused, without
a deeper reason or motivation except for self-gratification and be acceptable publicly.

Before we proceed to the “Discern” step, let us pause and discuss what have been presented so far. You
can respond to any one of these two questions:

a) Which of the seven features of the cult of the body do you observe as widespread in our
society? Give more concrete examples or reasons.
b) Which of the seven features of the cult of the body are you afraid for yourself because you
might be falling into it?
 c) Are there other features not listed above which you think is important to be included about
the cult of the body?

Let us “DISCERN”

How do we respond to today’s obsession with the body? We shall look into what our cultures
and that of the Christians’ say to correct the cult of the body. It will be the primary focus of this section
to promote the unity and totality of the human self which has both body and soul.

A. “Body” in Filipino/Asian Experience

Here are some words for “body” in Asian cultures:

 katawan (Filipino Tagalog)
 lawas (Filipino Cebuano)
 体, 身体, 體(Chinese)

 몸(Korean)
 体, ボディ(Japanese)
 ร่างกาย(Thai)
 tubuh (Indonesian)
 शशशश(Hindi)
 badan (Malay)
 शशशशशशश(Punjabi)
 ‫(جسم‬Urdu)
 cơthể(Vietnamese)
 байгууллага(Mongolian)

In developing virtues or good habits (mabuting gawi) in everyday life, it is our body that acts out
our motivation to be good persons. The kind of person we are is seen by how we present our body to the
world. It is how we carry our body and the way we relate with other people that show the kind of persons
we are.

Accordingly, the good things we do with our body reflect the goodness of our character as
persons. Conversely, when we do “bad” things with our body, we should ask the question, “what kind of
persons are we and want to become?” This question is at the core of the question on the effects of what
we do with our body to our own selves or persons as there are also effects of our body on other people’s
bodies. When we do “bad” things with our body, our entire being is eaten up as it were to make us feel
unclean or dirty to ourselves and in front of other people.

In Filipino ordinary language, the word for “body” is the katawan. The word comes from
ka+tawo+an. Tawo or tao is “person”. The prefix ka refers to “shared, togetherness, affinity, relationship
or commonality,” while the suffix an denotes “repeated action”. Literally, katawan is “the person who
shares his/her humanity with others in repeated action.” The first printed book in the Philippines,
Doctrina Christiana, refers to the person as tauo and the body as catauoan.An examination of the word
katawan reveals the following important understanding of the body in the Filipino context.

a) Katawan or the body signifies the whole person, the tao. Our body is the corporeality or
materiality of our personhood. It is the flesh, the matter or the physical of who we are. The
body is not a thing or an object but a living reality of our personhood. We do not merely
“use” the body like a machine that does not have any feelings. Our katawan is who we are
with its unique identity. I do not HAVE a body. I AM my body.
 To do good or bad things to our body is to behave as good or bad persons. The way we
carry our body in the world through our relationships with other people projects our inner selves
or the kind of persons we are. The katawan also includes each part of the part. Whatever happens
to any part of the body affects our whole person. This is expressed in many proverbial sayings on
the body.

A Filipino proverbial saying goes this way: Ang sakit ng kalingkingan, ramdam ng buong
katawan (“The pain of a little finger is felt by the whole body,” or the whole person). This does
not only refer to any kind of bodily pain but it also says about social relationships. This means
that when one member is in pain, the whole community or society is also suffering such as
poverty, sexual violence, social discrimination, and so forth. The Chinese people would say,
“When the heart is at ease, the body is healthy.” Meaning, when we are happy or contented and
not experiencing problems or difficulties in life, our body remains strong and sick-free.

b) Katawan, the body, is the embodiment of our loob (katawan na may ni loob; ang loob na
pinangangatawan). We met the Filipino loob in chapter 3. To reiterate, loob is the seat of our
authentic self, our intentions, thoughts and feelings, joys, desires, longings, needs, fears, anxieties
and everything that constitutes our being. We would know the inner disposition of the person by
his or her physical or bodily appearance and action. The Filipino does not measure the beauty or
ugliness of a person simply by his or her physique or outer appearance but by the actions that
communicate a self that is either beautiful or ugly. As Jose M. de Mesa points out, “Naturally,
this loob is manifested through external behavior and behavior in an authentic person stems from
the loob and is not used to camouflage the inner self.” The opposite of magandang tao (“a
beautiful person”) is not pangit na tao (“an ugly person”). Rather, the measurement is based on
the bodily behaviors: masamang tao or asal hayop (“bad person” or “behaving an animal”). The
true self or loob is the real humanity of the person and he or she must behave as a good human
being. The Korean and Japanese people have these words of wisdom, “When tigers die, they
leave leather behind. When people die, they leave their names behind.”

There is therefore a unity between katawan and loob. As the body is a mirror, a door to,
or a medium of our loob, the inner self is embodied and expressed through the katawan. It is
important to know that in the Filipino experience, walang katawan na walang loob – “there is no
body without an ‘inside’.” This is why when someone hurts another person physically, it is the
whole self of that person, particularly the dignity of the person, that is hurt and not just a “thing”
of the body. When we physically hurt our own body, it is our very self as persons, our dignity,
who is in pain. This is so because ang loob ay may katawan – the inner self has a body, in unity
or totality. When we respect the bodies of other people, we respect their person as a whole. On
the other hand, when we disrespect other people, we disrespect or even deny their existence.

c.) The katawan has a loob which is related to what is called in English language as “soul” or
“spirit”. In Filipino language, the soul is often translated as kaluluwa and spirit as espiritu
(actually, this is Spanish in origin) or diwa. It is not easy to translate the English words of “soul”
or “spirit” in Filipino because they come from another cultural worldview. Some scholars suggest
that the loob as the life-giving and animating force within us can be the dynamic equivalent of
“soul” or “spirit”. According to Agnes M. Brazal:

“In some indigenous perspectives, the person is regarded as possessing a ginhawa (the
life breath which ceases to exist when we die; also referred to as the first soul) and a dungan (an
autonomous spirit residing in the body, an alter ego, “double” or soul stuff; it continues to exist
after death in the form of an anito). Present-day shamans continue to believe that everyone is
born with a dungan (soul stuff) which is nurtured and developed. A dungan must feel at home in
the body for the host person to experience satisfactory well-being. If the dungan does not feel at
home in its habitat, it can be led by (other) sprits to get out of the person’s body, roam around and
be held in captivity by the ingkantu. The loss of the soul-double leads to prolonged illness or
even death of the host person. Whatever we may call the dungan today, psyche or spirit, what is
clearly communicated in this belief is the importance for a person to feel at home in one’s
pangangatawan … in order that ginhawa(well-being) can be experienced.” (Note: ingkantu are
non-visible elementals.)

At this juncture, let us have a short discussion on these ideas of Dr. Brazal. Do you, in
your cultures, have similar or related beliefs and practices on “body” and “soul” that speak of its
unity or connectedness?
The soul then is not superior to the body and the body is not inferior to the soul. To take care of
the soul is to take care also of the body and vice-versa. Body and soul, matter and spirit, katawan
and loob are inseparable. Even in death, Filipinos dress up the dead for a new journey in the
afterlife and they are offered food for reverence and respect. These practices may come into
conflict with the teachings of the Catholic Church and other religions. But we shall go back to
this question later in this chapter and in the last chapter of this course.

d.)Katawan or the body with loob or soul is relational being. We recall that the word katawan
has three aspects: ka+tawo+an, where ka is to have a shared experience, an is for repeated action
and the tawo or person. This implies that the person (body and soul, katawan at loob) is not an
individual self, self-sufficient, independent of or autonomous from other beings. Rather, the
person is a relational being, whose katawan and loob, or the whole person with inalienable
dignity and worth is commonly shared with the rest of humanity.
Asian people have a strong sense of interdependence and interconnectedness. Whether
the other person is “not one of us” (naiibang tao) or “one of us” (hindi naiibang tao), courteous
civility is at least required because that other person also has a loob we share with him or her.
Simple bodily greetings express this oneness with humanity, such as taking the hand of the elder
to place on one’s forehead, bowing one’s head in different degrees of relationships, over the heart
or on forehead, using words of recognition (like, “Kumusta po kayo?” or “Magandang umaga po”
for Filipinos. “Have you eaten?” for Chinese, “Namaste” for people of Indian subcontinent),
sharing betel nut (buai) or rice or coconut/palm wine, taking off one’s shoes before entering the
house or holy premises, pressing of hands with another person, palms touching and fingers
pointed upwards, in front of the chest and smiling even toward strangers which is practiced by
many Asian communities. These are ways of making people “be at home” with one another’s
bodies.

The sense interrelatedness of body and soul, that is the whole person, spills over to the
natural world, including the seen or visible and unseen or non-visible realities. Practices abound
among Asian peoples in their high regard for forests, mountains, skies, seas, fields, stones, trees,
some animals and so forth. The underlying belief in the rituals is the presence of unseen spirits
who are residing in the natural world and living side-by-side with the humans. They too are part
of the earth and respect and honor are also rendered to them.

To summarize this section of the current chapter, for Asian peoples, they see the body
and soul in indivisible unity. They understand the body as a “spirited body” (katawan na may
loob), which is a body with a life-giving spirit, and the soul as “embodied spirit” (loob na
pinangangatawan), which is a soul that is integrally related to the body. The good things that we
 do to our body nourish our soul and the bad things we do to our body harms if not destroys the
soul. As the Japanese people think, “Even a sheet of paper has two sides,” so body and soul are
one that make us humans holistically.

B. “Body” and “Soul” in the Biblical and Christian Traditions

1) Biblical Tradition: A Holistic Understanding

In the Hebrew/Old Testament Bible, we find words that are translated in English as “body” and
“soul.” These are basar and nepeš. We must however understand these words within the Hebrew culture
and not to impose our knowledge of the concepts of “body” and “soul” as they are used today. We quote
here John Sachs (1991: 52)
In English Bibles, “soul” usually translates the OT Hebrew word nepeš, but it
means something much broader: “breath,” “life-blood,” “life,” or quite simply “person”
or “self.” In Gen 2:7, we read that when God blew the breath of life into Adam, Adam
became a nepeš, a “living being.” Hebrew does not have a special word for body. In the
Psalms, however, we find many examples of parallelisms, in which the word flesh
(basar) or other body words like heart (leb), are used as synonyms of soul and not to
designate a contrasting (or opposite) component part. For example, “O God, you are my
God whom I seek; for you my flesh pines and my soul thirsts…” (Ps 63:2). Soul and
flesh, either alone or together, stand for the total living person.

Both human beings and the other animals are animated by ruah or nisma, both of which mean
“breath” or “life force” (Gen 2:7); 7:22). It is sometimes even identified with the very ruah of God (Job
33:4; 34:14) but it does not refer to the “real self” or individual person as something distinct from the
body.

In other words, both basar and nepeš refer to the living person. They are two ways of
speaking of the same reality, that of the human being. The Filipino category of katawan and loob
comes close to the Biblical understanding of the human person. We also use puso (“heart”) alternately
with loob. A person with a good heart (mabuting puso) is a good person (taong mabuting-loob). The ruah
of God can be translated as hininga ng Diyos but the biblical message is deeper than hininga. It is
ginhawa ng Diyos (wellness of God) that appropriately describes God’s powerful “breath” that has given
life to us. Ps 22:3 speaks also of the unity of the physical and inner aspects of the person: Pinagiginhawa
niya ang aking kaluluwa (“God refreshes my being”). The Tagalog version in the song of Ps 22 directly
points that“Pinagiginhawa niya akong lubos” (“God satisfies me to the fullest”).

Henceforth, when the Old Testament uses basar or flesh or body, it is talking about the
person and when it uses nepeš, it also points to the person. In the Hebrew Bible, the person is seen
holistically or in totality.

It is striking that the Hebrews associated what we think of as “spiritual” activities

with parts of the body. The heart is the organ of intelligence, will and desire while the
liver and the kidneys are the organs of conscience, grief and bitterness. Thinking, feeling
and willing are conceived holistically as interrelated bodily activities. Reduction of life or
self to a soul or to the body for that matter is unknown. (Sachs, 52)

We find the same perspective of unity or oneness of the person in the New Testament
writings with the usage of psyche (“soul”) and sarx (“body”).
 Psyche refers to real, physical, individual, flesh, blood and mortal life. “The Son
of Man has come … to give his psyche in ransom for the many” (MK 10:45). In Acts
2:43 pasa psyche means “everybody”… It includes the whole realm of feelings, emotions
and attitudes (Mk 14:34; Lk 2:35). Like in the (Old Testament) counterpart basar, sarx
almost always mean the whole, living, human being or humanity as a whole….

In the letters of St. Paul, there is a contrast between flesh and spirit (pneuma). For St.
Paul,

The issue is not the opposition between body and soul but the opposition between sinful humanity
and the Spirit of the holy God. Writing on the resurrection to the Corinthians, he says, “A natural body
(somapsychikon, “soulish body”) is sown and a spiritual body (soma pneumatikon) comes up”

(1 Cor 15:44). Earlier in the same letter, Paul distinguishes between one who is still soul
(psychikos) or flesh (sarkikos) “of this world” (1 Cor 2: 13 – 3:3).

What St. Paul is saying here is that the body or soma is not a corpse or dead body. It is also not something
that is merely attached to the soul which is more important. The body, as much as the soul, is the true self.
The transformation by God involves the whole person, so the resurrection is also a transformed self.

This brief survey of biblical ideas informs us that the body is important as much as the soul,
because both body and soul are composite of the human person. Neither one is superior over the other but
both body and soul speak of the human being in his or her concrete totality. Basar and nepeš, psyche and
soma – these are two different ways of describing the living reality of the total human person. God’s
offer of salvation (kaginhawaan), therefore, is for the whole person, the whole creation for that matter,
matter and spirit, body and soul. “Christians understand that by being embodied and by being redeemed,
they are called to a dynamic personal integration as well as to a full incorporation into the community”
(James Keenan, 2002: 138).

2) Church Teaching and Practice

When Christianity found itself in a different culture where Greek and Roman philosophies were
the dominant ways for understanding realities, the believers had to wrestle their faith in Christ with the
ways of thinking and doing in that culture. This was obvious in the struggle of Christians between their
belief in the unity of the body and soul redeemed in Christ during the early centuries of Christianity and
the force of the Greco-Roman philosophies that would shape Christian theology and practice later in
history.

a) Contesting the Separation between Body and Soul. The Christian movement of the 2nd to the 6th
centuries had to adopt a non-biblical terminology to express the faith in Christ. The believers were faced
with a culture that was different from the world of the Bible and thus their responses to the questions
about life and being human was situated in a particular cultural framework that included language and
philosophies. Using now the terminology of “body” and “soul” (which were not issues in the biblical
times as we have seen above), Christianity had to grapple with communicating the biblical truths and
insights. We can summarize the positions of the Church teaching in these ways:

(1) As to whether Jesus Christ was simply human or purely divine, the Church rejected both
extreme thinking. At that time, there were those, Christians and non-Christians alike, who
believed that Christ was merely a bodily creation of God, secondary to God, and a son of a
human mother’s body. This means that Christ is not divine nor shares anything with God that
 (2) made him God-like. On the other side, there were claims that Jesus was purely and
exclusively divine, without any semblance to us as humans. If Jesus became human, he only
appeared “like” a human being but his whole self was solely divine.
(3) From these two tendencies, the Church asserted the view that Christ was both human and
divine, without division, confusion and separation. From the Council of Nicea (325) to the
Council of Chalcedon (481), the Church taught that Jesus has of the same loob
(“consubstantial”; “the same substance or nature”) with God as regard his divinity, as well as
of the same loob with us as regards his humanity. To think and believe that Christ was either
human or divine is to be disoriented or at worst to deviate from the Christian faith. The
kaginhawaan (“salvation”) brought by God is made in and through the whole person of Jesus.
Accordingly, God’s salvation, whereby Jesus the unique bearer is offered to humanity, is the
salvation of the whole person and not just one aspect of us, either our soul or our body.

(4) This teaching of the unity of human-divine had a connecting truth about the human person.
The Church consistently rejected, on the one hand, the view that reduced the human person to
something essentially material or bodily. This thinking says, “Enjoy your body, your physical
and sexual thirst, and ignore your conscience or soul!” On the other hand, the Church also
refused to take the view of those who dichotomized the human person by spiritualizing
mediations, contemplations, and piety that gave exclusive attention to the spiritual or the soul
and denied the body and the material world because they belonged to the homeland of evil.
For the Church, the human person is an integral being, with both body and soul, matter and
spirit. We have learned from St. Ireneaus in chapter 3 that , “The glory of God is the human
fully alive.” To be “fully alive” is to experience life, both in its physicality or materiality and
in its spiritual or “soulish” aspects, that is, in the totality of life.

b) The Influence of Dualism - While the above positions were held by the Church in the early centuries
after the period of Christ and the New Testament communities, subsequent centuries and generations of
Christians succumbed to the Greek philosophies, particularly Platonic dualism, in both levels of Church
teaching and Christian practice.

Briefly, the Greek philosopher Plato (428/427 or 424/423 BC – 348/347 BC) theorized that
reality can be understood as having two spheres or realms. One sphere or realm is the world of ideas,
which Plato considered as the “real world” because ideas are absolute, eternal, super- or beyond the
natural. This world is above, superior and separate from the world of the senses or sensible world. This
lower, inferior world is a shadowy illusion of the real. Empirical, material, and physical realities are
transitory, brutish, and corruptible. The measure of being a human person is to reach the world of ideas by
way of reason and contemplation. This means that one must practically ignore if not deny the material,
the flesh, the bodily.

This thinking was eventually adopted by the Christians. We may say that they were children of
their times. They were born, lived and died within an environment that was heavily shaped by Platonic
dualism. Even if the early Church maintained the unity of the body and soul, Platonic influences had a far
more significant and lasting effect on the teachings, theologies, practices, rituals and spiritualities. To the
world of ideas of Plato, Christians placed the soul as the only important aspect of the human person and
the body, with its needs and desires, was relegated to the world of evil. While the soul will be immortal
upon death of a person, the body disintegrates to non-existence. Along with the soul as the only “real,”
Christianity included priesthood, the sacraments, the men, holiness and the Church as a whole. Along
with the body, the homeland of evil incorporated the laity, the women, the secular or temporal and non-
Christian believers.
 This dualism has destructive effects in the long run, particularly in the Christians’ denial of the
body and the material. The biblical experience presents unity and totality of the whole person while the
Platonic Christianity presents a dissociated self whereby the soul is the only thing that matters and the
body must be tamed, controlled and denied of its needs and desires. A person becomes “spiritual” when
he or she always prays, receives the sacraments and resides with God in one’s mind in silence and
solitude. “Spirituality” has become an affair of the individual person and done privately through some
“spiritual exercises.” The goal of human life is for the soul to be saved so that after life it will go to
heaven.

In this way of thinking, the bible is understood not anymore in its Hebrew and Jewish culture but
in the Greek-Roman, Platonic dualism. The passages about Christ are mis-interpreted because the
interpretations use the Platonic dualism. The impact of this dualism will be clearly shown in the way
gender orientations and relationships are viewed and how sexuality generally is lived out in a negative
way. (We shall see this in next chapter.)

c) Recovering the Unity and Totality of the Human Person. The dualistic thinking prevails in our time
today, however with the cult of the body increasingly and forcefully taking over the preoccupation for the
soul. There is an urgent need to recover the biblical understanding of the body and soul as integrally
united in the person. The recovery of the unity and totality of the human person entails the following line
of convictions:

(1) We have seen in chapter 3 that out of God’s kagandahang-loob, everything is created good,
including matter and spirit (or what the Creed refers to as “visible and invisible”). It is the
whole creation, and in particular, the whole human person, not just the soul, who is created in
the image of God. God calls human persons in their entire being, including the body, to an
endless sharing of divine love and life.

(2) Jesus of Nazareth, the human, bodily embodiment of God, took upon himself the
responsibility to offer salvation to the whole person. His preference of offering salvation or
kaginhawaan to those whose bodies were denied or violated by society, is a pressing call for
us to do the same in order to enter the reign or kingdom of God.

(3) If Christ is God’s katawan in the world, discipleship in Christ is living up to our being mga
kinatawan ni Kristo. To carry the cross as Christ did is not to punish the body but to use our
body, our whole person for the sake of those whose bodies in the world are left behind by
society. The last meal was his benchmark: to “do this in memory of me” is to offer one’s
whole person as the way of the cross. This way, we are not only the body of Christ nor a
representation of Christ but we also exert every effort to embody Christ in his mission and
lifestyle.

(4) “The enemy of the spirit is not the body but the enemy of the spirit/body is sin. We must take
care not to make cults of either body and soul. Today, it is more often than not the soul,
sickened by fear, despair or addiction, which drags the body down, not the other way around!
And not only our bodies, but the body of our mother earth!” (Sachs, 57).

(5) The body is the reality in and through which the spirit or soul is really present in the world.
Walang katawan na walang loob, walang loob na walang katawan – There is no body
without a soul as its form of existence and there cannot be such thing as a human soul which
is not related to the body.
 (6) The invitation of St. Paul to the Galatians “to live by the Spirit” by “walking by the Spirit” is
neither to deny our body nor to separate ourselves from our bodily needs and to just pay
attention to our soul. On the contrary, St. Paul was invoking our moral task to treat our
bodies today as fully incorporated with a soul or Spirit and to live our life, our bodily life, as
embraced, empowered, and nourished by the Spirit of Christ. This way, we can say that truly
our body is the Temple of the Spirit. “The challenge… is not ‘Save your soul!’ but ‘Open
your entire living self (divided not by body/soul but by sin) to the living, life-giving Spirit of
God!’”(Sachs, 54)

A. St Vincent de Paul’s “Mortification”

One of the virtues that St. Vincent de Paul lived out is mortification. In a time when there was so
much suffering because of hunger, homelessness and destruction of wars, St. Vincent believed he had to
be in solidarity with the victims of social misery. He understood and practiced mortification in terms of
denying the exterior senses, including sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing, that is to say, the needs of the
body.

But St. Vincent also said that mortification involves denial of the interior senses, including
understanding, will and memory (understood as being nostalgic of past experiences). Moreover, he also
taught that the “passions of the soul” should be denied and to let reason govern one’s life. By “passions
of the soul”, he was referring to self interests and ambitions that can bring pride and arrogance.

The saint apparently was also influenced by Platonic dualistic thinking that the body and the
“passionate” soul belong to a lower realm of life, with the “rational soul” was above and superior over the
body and its passions. What he intended however was to show that the person must be indifferent to the
needs of the body and the feelings the body gives to the person because these can distract the person from
serving effectively those who are suffering.

B. Pangangatawan ng Loob: Coming Home of the Body and Soul to the Self

Today, we need to re-interpret mortification in a new light especially in view of the social
phenomenon of the cult of the body. St. Vincent’s ideals need to be grounded in the biblical and early
church tradition of the body-soul unity or integration towards the attainment of wholeness in our well-
being.

In this connection, Percy Bacani, a priest of the Missionaries of Jesus, speaks about the
imperative of “returning the spiritual to the body.” The body per se is not bad or evil but it is people who
think that the body and its needs must be negated. The “spiritual” got lost as it were because people
preferred to care for the soul only and as it were, the soul or spiritual became separated from the body.
Bacani proposed the vision of “returning” the spiritual to the body and to be at home with the body. It is
about time that we recover the integration of the body and soul, matter and spirit for “Coming home to
my body is coming home to who I am.” (Percy Bacani: 2002).

We would like to use the vision of “returning” and “coming home” in laying down the practical
implications of the body-soul unity. We find this vision in pangangatawan ng loob, which is the person
as embodied spirit or spirited body. We have seen in both the Asian/Filipino cultures and the
Biblical/Christian tradition that the person is essentially a self with both body and soul. Pangangatawan
ng loob suggests a body that is at home with the soul and a soul at home with the body. In other words,
both body and soul have returned and come home to each other. They are integrally whole in the person.
 Pangangatawan ng loob is being true to one’s self, guided by a desire to do goodness to one’s
self and others. As the loob or authentic inner self, which we connect also to the spirit or soul, is at the
core of personhood, so our behaviors towards our own body and the bodies of others show the true self
that we have. To live by pangangatawan ng loob is to live as integrated persons with the virtues of self-
care and integrity.

1) The Virtue of Self-Care – In contrast to the cult of the body, we are called to take care of our body as
the embodiment and expression of our soul, spirit or loob. Caring for the body is caring for the loob. To
practice self-care is to give our self-respect to our personhood. This is done in many ways, among which
are the kind of food we eat and drink, practices that maintain cleanliness of body, doing routines of good
hygiene, the clothes we wear, the way we order our things at home and school, what we say and how we
say things and using modestly manufactured products that are not harmful to our body, animals and the
natural world.

Self-care as good habit also means being sensitive and responding to our body, especially when
we are tired, stressed out and sick. We must give time to our body to relax as our spirit also will
experience respite and bliss. We need to take in sufficient amount of air, water and food and have a
balance between rest and activity, between play and work or studies, as well as between solitude and
social activities and between silence and noise. To live by self-care is to have a sense of self-discipline
and balance in our life.

The virtue of self-care also requires that we know our human anatomy and its dynamics. Many
people have difficulties and problems related to health and in interpersonal (also sexual) relationships
because they do not know how the body works, what are the good things that they should do and the bad
things they should avoid. Knowledge through information and updated new developments must be
attained regularly.

Self-care as good habit extends to other virtues. When we care for our body, as we care for our
whole person, we practice also self-esteem. Self-esteem refers to our overall emotional evaluation of our
worth as persons. Without being arrogant and proud, a “high” self-esteem encompasses good feelings
about one’s abilities and capabilities, talents and gifts and ways of friendly relations with other people.
Self-esteem, however, includes negative evaluations of our self, as in how we feel about it. Having “low”
self-esteem implies low self-confidence or worthiness. In practicing self-care, we must continually make
evaluations about our self-esteem so that we can improve our character.

Self-care also is connected to caring for other people’s bodies with whom we share our loob.
When we recognize that other people too have loob or soul that is authentically good, we are urged to
respond to them with humility and respect. For example, when we listen to our teachers or to our
classmates when they recite, we are showing how good we are in caring for their bodies and loob. They
will feel they are respected and that will mean a lot to them in making them feel positive about self-
esteem and worth. Negatively, if we are busy using our smart phones in front of teachers and classmates,
we show that we do not respect their presence thus denying the existence of their body-soul. In doing so,
because it is a bad habit or a vice, we violate not only other people but our own integrity as persons. In
interpersonal relationships and work environment, giving affirmation or appreciation to other people is a
demonstration of how much we care for their personhood.

3) The Virtue of Integrity – Pangangatawan ng loob challenges us to act out the virtue of
integrity. This may mean many things. Here is a list of a few examples of how to be men and
women of integrity in the context of our topic on the unity of body and soul:
 - being true and good in our intentions;
- doing our promises in action (pangatawanan ang ating salita)
- being honest and transparent in our transactions;
- telling the truth and fighting for the truth;
- having a goal or purpose beyond material gains, that will contribute to the world;
- taking charge of things or getting involved in concerns larger than our own;
- recognizing our strengths and limitations;
- seeking the help of others as we help others;
- learning to stop and let go;
- preparing and taking quizzes and examinations and being accountable for the results (in
contrast to cheating)
- being fair and just to others (instead of pandaraya and panlalamang)
- leading by example;
- living an austere or modest lifestyle according to one’s given resources;
- respecting the bodies of other people;
- doing things in moderation (not excessive) and in simplicity
- being humble in one’s achievements; and
- serving people, especially the poor, weak and victims, in acts of charity and active
solidarity.

Summary:

1. There are seven features of the ideology of the cult of the body prevalent in our society today and these
are:
a. individualism
b. narcissism
c. self-fragmentation
d. commercialism
e. blurring of vision of “good” and “bad”
f. life and history in a linear fashion
g. a body without a spirit or soul

2. In the Filipino context…

a. Katawan or the body signifies the whole person, the tao. Our body is the corporeality or
materiality of our personhood. It is the flesh, the matter, or the physical of who we are. The
body is not a thing or an object but a living reality of our personhood.
b. Katawan, the body, is the embodiment of our loob (katawan na may niloob; ang loob na
pinangangatawan).
c. The katawan has a loob which is related to what is called in English language as “soul” or
“spirit”.
d. Katawan or the body with loob or soul is relational being.

3. In the Old Testament, basar and nepeš are translated in English as “body” and “soul.”Both basar and
nepeš refer to the living person. They are two ways of speaking of the same reality, that of the human
being.

4. In the New Testament, psyche and sarx are equal to basar and nepeš.

5. This brief survey of biblical ideas informs us that the body is important as much as the soul, because
both body and soul are composite of the human person. Basar and nepeš, psyche and soma – these
are two different ways of describing the living reality of the total human person.
6. The Church confronted two issues such as the separation between body and soul and dualism.

7. St. Vincent de Paul lived out mortification in solidarity with the victims of social misery during his
time.

8. Pangangatawan ng loob as coming home of the body and soul to the self is being true to one’s self
and others. This can be done by living out the virtues of self-care and integrity.

Let us “ACT”

A. What Can We Do?

Virtue, again, is about bringing about what we can be. This chapter deals with one of most
fundamental perspective to human life and becoming fully human: the body and soul in its unity, totality,
wholeness. In this last section, we shall formulate behaviors or practices that will show that we want to
come home to our selves, body and soul, through pangangatawan ng loob.

First, look again at the list of “good” and “bad” things that you listed down at the beginning of
this chapter.

Second, reorganize or rearrange those behaviors and add more, guided by this question: How can
we act out the virtues of self-care and integrity in our everyday life? Submit your complete answers to
your teacher.

Announcement: Long quiz next meeting, covering chapters 4 and 5.

Written for IRED by:

Dr. Emmanuel S. de Guzman, Prof. Gabriel de los Santos,
Prof. Gina Udarbe, Prof. Jennifer Villagonzalo
Name : __________________________________________________
Time : __________________________________________________
Date : __________________________________________________

a) Behaviors or practices that I want to STOP (write down at least 5 behaviors or

practices):

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

b) Behaviors or practices that I want to CONTINUE (write down at least 5 behaviors or

practices):

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

c) Behaviors or practices that I want to START (write down at least 5 behaviors or

practices):

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)