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The Bible knows nothing of the Greek dualism of flesh and mind in conflict, of the body being the prison of the soul. It knows only the moral struggle between the desire of the creator and the desires of the creature, between the standard--holiness--and sin--perversion, but in this conflict the entire man is engaged. Thus, the opposition between the animal man and the spiritual man has reference to the totality of the human being. According to St. Augustine, man is carnal even in his spirit or he is spiritual even in his flesh.
The soul vivifies the body and makes of it a living flesh; the spirit spiritualizes and makes of them both a spiritual man. The spirit does not place the soul and body side by side, but it manifests itself through the psychic and the corporeal in qualifying them by its energies. In accordance with this structure of the human being, asceticism constitutes a very exact science and a vast culture that renders the body and the soul transparent and submissive to the spiritual. On the other hand, man can “extinguish the Spirit”,15.1 cause the source of his life to dry up, have carnal thoughts and reduce himself to animal flesh, the prey of death and hell.
The biblical vision thus permits us to take an exact measure of evil and to discover its secret origins. Sin never comes from below, from the flesh, but from above, from the spirit. The first fall occurred in the world of angels, pure spirits.
Carnal perversion denounces and accuses the sin of the spirit against the flesh. That is why chastity transcends physiology alone and depends upon the entire structure of the spirit. The emptiness of a roaming and decentralized spirit causes dispersion of its energies. On the contrary, spiritual writers teach the silence of the heart, “the language of the future world”, and the recollection that is opposed to all dissipation of thought. They seek inwardness saying: “Do not seek anything outside, but enter within yourself, into your heart, and there find God, the angels, and the kingdom.”
The heart of which the Bible speaks does not coincide, however, with the emotional center of which the psychologists speak. The Jews thought with their hearts. As a metaphysical center, it integrates all the faculties of the human being; reason, intuition, will, are never strangers to the choices and sympathies of the heart. Radiating and penetrating everywhere, it is nevertheless hidden in its own mysterious depths. “Know thyself” is addressed above all to this secret heart.
“Who can understand the heart,” Jeremiah asks, and he immediately answered, “I, the Lord, alone probe the mind and test the heart.”15.2 This means God alone can penetrate to the obscure sphere of the unconscious and subconscious. St. Peter also speaks of “the inner life of the heart”;15.3 and it is at this unfathomable depth that the human ego keeps itself. St. Gregory of Nyssa clearly indicated this depth, showing it to be in the image of God: “Man, in his unknowability of himself, manifests the imprint of the ineffable.”15.4
“Where thy treasure is, there also will thy heart be.”15.5Man is worth what the desires of his heart, the objects of his love, are worth. “The prayer of Jesus”, called “the prayer of the heart”, makes the heart the place of his presence, “for God has put into the human heart the desire for him”.15.6 To find in God the absolutely desirable and to place one's heart there reveals an astonishing intimacy with God. Indeed, the Gospel places above the morality of slaves and mercenaries that of the friends of God. “No longer do I call you servants... But I have called you friends,”15.7Christ said. God does even more in asking man to accomplish his will as if it were man's own will. In saying “Thy will be done”, we say, “I desire it, it is my will that thine be done.” Such a harmony between the two fiats raises the human person to the level of the heart of God.
The Latin word persona as well as the Greek prosopon signifies “mask”, and contains a profound philosophy of the human person. To exist is to participate in being or in nothingness. Man can make of himself “an icon of God” or he can become a demoniacal grimace, an ape of God. “He who is near me is near the fire,” declares an ancient agraphon;15.8 the one who understands it “does not cease adding fire to fire”.15.9, Man can revive the flame of love or the fire of Gehenna. He can convert his yes into an infinity of unions; he can also by his no break his being into infernal separations and solitudes.
Created to the image and likeness of God, man possesses an essential orientation that determines him. The resemblance proposed is in the personal realization of the objective image. It releases the epektasis, the tension of striving toward the Most High. As every copy is attracted by its original, man as an image aspires to go beyond himself in order to cast himself into God and to find there the appeasement of his nostalgia. Holiness is nothing else but an unquenchable thirst, an intensity of desire, for God. By its light the ascesis of spiritual attention learns the inestimable art of seeing everything as an image of God. “A perfect monk,” says St. Nil of Sinai, “will esteem after God all men as God himself.”15.10 This iconographic manner of looking at every man explains the great ascetics' astonishing optimism, the striking tone of their joy, their authentically evangelical appreciation of man; they always showed an infinite respect for man as “the place of God”.
We can understand the scope of the Ave in the salutation that St. Seraphim used to address to all whom he met, “My joy”. He saw God himself coming to meet him; he read his love on every face, and joyously saluted his presence.15.11
A created incarnate spirit, man is placed between the spirituality of the angels and the carnal corporeality of this world. St. Gregory of Palamas saw in this situation the primacy of man over the angels. The angels are “the second lights”, reflecting the light of God. Man is transmuted into light and illumines the world. “You are the light of the world.” The nimbus of the saints shows this. The cosmic nature of the world as well as his own body is the biosphere of the human spirit. As artist and creator, it is with these elements that he is called upon to create the values of the kingdom, and this is why the angels serve him.