The Mystery of the Human Body, Part 2: Communication and Union

In part 1 I discussed how the body and soul interact through the intellect and will in ways that the hard sciences still do not understand. Here I reflect on how the soul communicates through the body and how two bodies interact in more than a simply physical way.

Communication of the Self

Another mystery of the body is its ability to communicate the self to others. One could say that the soul has control over the body and can pull all the right strings to convey its messages to the world. But then we hear such expressions as “Your face betrayed you” or “I can see it in your face.” Some people have what is called an expressive face. Their inner self, their character and emotions are revealed through their bodily behavior even against their will. An extreme form of this is blushing; the embarrassment or shame felt by the soul is conveyed by the body by means of a red and warm face. The opposite of this is the “poker face,” the person whose face does not show as easily what is going on inside. Lewis says that evidence of the Fall, of the quarrel between the body and the soul, can be seen in two facts: the coarse jokes made about bodily functions and the eeriness we have around dead, human bodies.¹ In both of these we can see the mysterious ability of the body to communicate the soul. Coarse jokes can cause us to blush. We naturally want the human body to be treated with dignity and are ashamed or embarrassed when it is not. And when the human body is dead, we instinctively know that something is very wrong and give it a different name: corpse. We truly know when the body is bereft of the soul, and we really recognize that the person is no longer there. The body, even as a corpse in death, communicates the soul (or its absence). Even further, according to Pope John Paul II, the body communicated original solitude to the first human being: “The body, by which man shares in the visible created world, makes him at the same time aware of being ‘alone.’”² Adam saw that he was not like the other animals, he was alone (Gn 2:19–20). Chesterton says, “it is customary to insist that man resembles the other creatures. Yes; and that very resemblance he alone can see.”³ Even when Eve was created and Adam first saw her, he did not say “This is soul of my soul”; rather he said “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gn 2:23). We may resemble other animals; but just by comparing bodies, we know “the difference of man and the difference it makes” (to appropriate a most-apt phrase of Mortimer Adler⁴). What a mystery! The human being has been designed in such a way that the physical, material body can expose the spiritual, immaterial soul and communicate it to others. The body has been created as an integral part of the human self.

One-Flesh Union

Another mystery is marriage. After the passage cited above in which the man says “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh,” Genesis continues “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh” (Gn 2:24). In Matthew 19:5, Jesus quotes this and uses the future passive form of the verb κολλ?ω which means “to cleave to” but also “to be glued or cemented,” and the future form of the verb ει?μ? (to be)⁵: the husband will be cemented to his wife, and they will be one. In marriage the two souls cleave to each other, and the two bodies are cemented or glued together. This bodily connection is even evident in biology. The husband’s sperm mildly suppresses the wife’s immune system so that the sperm is not rejected by the wife’s body. Consequently, “from an immunological point of view, a two-in-one-flesh intimacy can be achieved.”⁶ Therefore, the common saying that a husband and wife are “soulmates” is an inadequate description of their union which is both spiritual and physical. In reality they are “soul/body mates” or “human mates.” The Bible, many times, uses the verb “to know” with the meaning “to have conjugal relations with.” Pope John Paul discusses this use of the verb:

When it speaks of “knowledge” … the Bible indicates the deepest essence of the reality of shared married life…. When they become one flesh, the man and the woman experience the meaning of their bodies in a particular way.… They reveal themselves to one another with that specific depth of their own human “I,” which precisely reveals itself also through their sex, their masculinity and femininity….

… The reality of conjugal union in which man and woman become “one flesh” contains in itself a new and in some way definitive discovery of the meaning of the human body in its masculinity and femininity…. Sex is not only decisive for man’s somatic individuality, but at the same time it defines his personal identity and concreteness. And exactly in this personal identity and concreteness as an unrepeatable feminine or masculine “I,” man is “known” when the words of Genesis 2:24 come true, “the man will unite with [know] his wife and the two will be one flesh.” The “knowledge” … reaches the innermost roots of this identity and concreteness, which man and woman owe to their sex. Such concreteness means both the uniqueness and [the] unrepeatability of the person.⁷

Human beings are created this way. Our bodies, no less than our souls, are not meant to be alone, but are meant for physical and spiritual intimacy with another. How extraordinary, then, is the celibacy and virginity of priests and religious! They have voluntarily given up something earthly (for which they were made), for something higher (for which they were also made)—intimacy with God. What a mystery this is, that two physically and spiritually separate human beings can become one without ESP or any science-fiction flight of fancy, but in reality. They can truly know one another through their bodies.

Notes

¹ C.S. Lewis, Miracles: How God Intervenes in Nature and Human Affairs (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.), 127.

² Pope John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, trans. Michael Waldstein (Boston: Pauline Books & Media, 2006), 152 (October 24, 1979).

³ G.K. Chesterton, “The Everlasting Man,” in G.K. Chesterton: Collected Works, vol. 2 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 395.

⁴ Mortimer Adler, The Difference of Man and the Difference It Makes (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967).

⁵ In Latin, the verb is esse which conjures up in my mind all the theological implications of “existence” (God and Christ saying “I am,” the importance to Thomas Aquinas of esse, God is esse, and on and on).

⁶ Donald DeMarco, “The Vatican and Same-Sex Unions,” Ethics and Medics 28.11 (November 2003).

⁷ Pope John Paul II, Man and Woman He Created Them, 207–8 (March 5, 1980).