Bishop Arthur J. Serratelli

Magazines, movies, television soap operas, and commercial advertisements for phones, household items, sports equipment, and clothing project an unrealistic standard of what it means to be a man or a woman. They have created the stereotype of slim women and muscular men as the ideal. It is no wonder that this country ranks the highest in the fitness industry around the world. More than 36,000 membership-based exercise facilities populate our landscape.

Furthermore, ever since the 1970s, there has been an ever-increasing number of weight loss and dieting programs. Today, someone can choose from the 30,000 diets registered with the American Dietetic Association. This intense preoccupation with the body reveals a trend toward materialism in our society. According to the materialistic view of life, an individual identifies himself or herself with their physical body. The body is all important. No wonder so many parents today choose to have their children play sports on Sunday and not attend church.

But, there is another trend that we can detect in our culture. It is the resurgence of Gnosticism. This world view was born in the first and second century A.D. It places a division between the material world and the spiritual world. Matter is evil. Only spirit is good. Gnosticism holds for a strict dualism of body and soul.

According to today’s Gnostic worldview, the material world gives us a body through evolution and God gives us our soul. Since the body comes from matter and matter is evil, the body is always defective. Thus, the body is simply a thing to be manipulated according to one’s own notion of the ideal. By the exercise of spiritual freedom, individuals are left free to reshape and refashion the body as they see fit.

In terms of human sexuality, neo-Gnosticism does not accept the distinction of male and female. Rather, human sexuality is, like all matter, flawed and can be changed by science and technology. In times past, sexual identity was accepted as a given. Today, sexual identity is promoted as a personal choice. And, the male and female sexual orientations are simply two lifestyle choices among many others.

Underpinning these modern cultural trends of materialism and neo-Gnosticism is the denial of God as the Creator who calls the human person, body and soul, into being. Scripture clearly teaches that “the Lord God formed the man out of the dust of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (Gen 2:7). Both body and soul are a gift of an all-good God.

How different is the biblical understanding of the human person from that of today’s culture. The body is not simply a temporary burden, destined for decay. The soul is not simply the immortal life principle longing to be released from the bonds of the material. No! The person is a whole. A unity. We are our body. We are our soul. We are an enfleshed spiritual being. Our body is integral to who we are (cf. Gaudium et Spes, 14). Substantially united to the soul, the body shares in the dignity of the soul. The whole human person is made “in the image and likeness of God” (Gen 1:27). Body and soul are good.

In the mystery of the Incarnation, the Son of God, coequal with the Father and the Holy Spirit, took on a human nature. Jesus had a human body and truly died in the flesh. His bodily Resurrection from the grave to the glory of heaven is the sure affirmation of the goodness of the human body! It is the bright promise that, “in an instant, in the blink of an eye, at the last trumpet” at the end of time, all the dead will rise from their graves to the fullness of life with God in heaven (1 Cor 15:50-55).

Even now our very bodies are sacred. As St. Paul reminds us, our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit. We are not our own. We have been purchased at a great price. Through the death and Resurrection of Jesus, God has made us his own, giving us a share in his own divine life. Thus, we glorify God in our bodies (cf. 1 Cor 6: 19-20). We reverence our body and care for it according to God’s wise design.

Today’s ideologies of materialism and Gnosticism that view the human body as an object to be manipulated at will during life and discarded at death actually degrade the dignity of the human person. But the biblical truth of the body elevates and extols the dignity of the person. Body and soul, we are destined for glory. We are made for heaven.