There are few things that are more misunderstood in the modern world than the word “spiritual.”

Try this: ask someone you know what the word “spiritual” means and they will probably answer that it is some type of emotional, subjective, or religious feeling.

Further, if one goes to Wikipedia as a source of enlightenment, in the article on “Spirituality” it says, “In modern times the emphasis is on subjective experience and ‘the deepest values and meanings by which people live,’ incorporating personal growth or transformation, usually in a context separate from organized religious institutions” (Wikipedia). This is not how the Early Church understood the meaning of “spiritual.”

In contrast, to the early Church, the word “spiritual” meant “immaterial reality.” Interestingly enough, if one looks up the definition of “spiritual” on Google’s dictionary, the first definition that comes up is “relating to or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things.” This definition is closer to the understanding of the Early Church.

Image from Pixabay

Spiritual Realities

So we must now ask a question: What are the things that affect our spirits that are not material or physical?

To begin to answer that question, we need to go back to the past for a lesson. For hundreds of years before Christianity, philosophers had long recognized that there were realities with which humans dealt that were immaterial and that could not be derived from only observation of the material world. This means these realities could not be perceived only by the senses of sight, hearing, feeling, smell, or taste. For example, the Pythagoreans recognized that the rules and objects of mathematics especially the concepts of the One and Geometry were immaterial realities.

To give you an idea of how this is so, try this thought experiment. Everything that you see that you call one, whether it is one person, or a place like one city, or a thing like one house, are all made up of many different parts. The fact that we can sense a unity in them is something that cannot be suggested by the parts, but it is something that only the mind can access. This is due to the fact that all these things are a result of purpose, which is by nature immaterial because the purpose (and therefore the design) of something exists immaterially before the physical thing takes shape. Further, it is that purpose that holds the thing together after the material parts have come together to make it, such as a house. This is why we repair and maintain the house because the purpose holds the parts together.

Following these thinkers, the philosopher Plato (who studied with the Pythagoreans) systematized this understanding in his Theory of the Forms. The Forms (also called Ideas) are realities that are nonphysical, eternal, and unchanging. They are not simply ideas in our minds, but they exist independently of our minds. Our minds can perceive them. An example from mathematics includes the idea of the triangle. This idea is nonphysical and unchanging, and thus eternal. Nothing one does in nature nor any amount of observation can change what it means to be a triangle. But the material world can replicate the Form, the Idea, and if it does so, it is because it participates in it. Further we can recognize whether something is a better representation of a triangle than another. This is due to the fact that our minds can recognize the Form, the Idea, because our minds are of the same nature as the Forms. Put another way, this is because our minds stand above nature, and the patterns they perceive such as the Idea of the One are not affected by the material world. We cannot get the Idea of a perfect triangle from observing things, but we can determine whether something is a better representation of a triangle than another. This is objective. This is also immaterial.

Following these discoveries, the philosophers categorized what comprised the immaterial realities and these realities were: The Laws of Logic, the rules and objects of Mathematics, Aesthetics (that is Values), and Morals. All these categories are unaffected by the material world, but the material world participates in them. They underlie the material world, and the material world is built on them. These realities are objective, meaning they are not left to opinion, but they are universally true.

In the ancient world, these immaterial realities were called “rational” and “intelligible” as opposed to “material” or “sense-perceptible” realities.

The Image of God: The Rational Mind

So how is all this related to the early Church?

The early Church largely accepted this understanding of “rational” realities and “material” realities because this was an objectively true observation about the nature of reality and it was consonant with Christian dogma because God was described first in the Old Testament as unchanging and eternal and this was repeated in the New Testament.

An example from the Old Testament that shows the unchangeability of God and the changeability of the material world is Psalm 102:25-27:

“Of old You laid the foundation of the earth,
And the heavens are the work of Your hands.

They will perish, but You will endure;
Yes, they will all grow old like a garment;
Like a cloak You will change them,
And they will be changed.

But You are the same,
And Your years will have no end” (NKJV).

An example from the New Testament is James 1:17, which reads:

“Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (NRSV).

There are many other examples, but these suffice to highlight that this idea is clearly present in the Scriptures.

But back to the insights of the past, the ancient philosophers called the mind of humans “the rational soul.” Rationality is the ability to grasp the immaterial underlying material reality. It is the ability to reason and to make connections about the world, for example tracing out cause and effect, determining meaning, and perceiving significance. Further, rationality is communicated by symbols, that is by using things to refer to something else. For example, the heart is the organ that pumps blood throughout the body. Yet, it is used to refer to love and the feelings that we have toward someone or something when we are genuinely affectionate of them. This is a symbolic usage of the word “heart” to describe the immaterial reality of love. We are the only creatures that have this ability.

Beyond all this, the early Church identified this rational soul as the image of God. This is due to the attributes of God mentioned in Genesis 1. Not one of them is material, but all are rational. It is also this rationality that lives within us that is the reflection of God, His Image.

Since we have this ability to be rational, it allows us to reflect on the past, to recognize patterns in the world, to make generalizations, to have foresight about the future, and to come up with purposes that can be actualized in material shapes. Yet we as humans also have an animal element in us. Due to this, we should use our minds to rule over our impulses and emotions. It is not easy for modern Western Christians to accept this conception of humanity who unknowingly recapitulate Gnostic anthropology in making the essence of human beings to be only spirit, and therefore ignoring the reality of the animal body.

But the Church Fathers take a more nuanced approach. They define the human being as “a rational animal.” That means “an animal who has a mind.” The mind, as mentioned above, is the image of God which was placed in us who are also bodily creatures.

To reference some of the writers of the early Church, St. Athanasius in his book Contra Gentes, the first part to On the Incarnation, explains that letting our animal impulses, urges, and emotions to rule over our minds leads to poor decisions. These decisions consist in choosing what is worse for the better. This is also the origin of evil and the origin of sin.

In addition, St. Macrina the Younger defines the human being in this fashion to her younger brother St. Gregory of Nyssa in the book On the Soul and the Resurrection.

Also, St. Gregory of Nyssa describes the human being and this conception of sin in the same terms in his sermons On the Making of Man.

All three of these writings of the Church Fathers go into detail about how on the one hand, the rational nature rules the animal nature in us and leads to a life of virtue reflecting our original purpose with which God created us, or on the other hand how it can be subjected to the animal nature that is in us, and thus lead to a life of sin. As a result, sin is understood as a disorder and sickness in humanity. Or in other words, we do not work properly anymore. This is the problem that needs to be corrected. This is what we need to be saved from.

The word “spiritual” in the early Church referred to these realities collectively. In our days, we associate this word with only a sense of God and good actions, but it was much larger than this to the mind of the early Church. It included the mind, which was the bearer of the Image of God; it included the laws of logic that allowed us to discover and understand the world; it included the laws and objects of mathematics that allowed us to make further discoveries and to manage our lives; it included the perception of value and beauty; and no less it included morality. These are the things that allow us to approach God, and to understand His love and message for us, and to grow in His likeness.

Click here to read Part II.

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