From Finitude to Transfiguration: A Theo-Phenomenological Reading of the Body in Eastern Orthodox Spirituality

Abstract

This article offers a theo-phenomenological investigation of the body, exploring the dialogue between contemporary phenomenology—especially its theological turn—and Eastern Orthodox spirituality as found in the Philokalia. Building on the phenomenological distinction between body and flesh and drawing on Orthodox theology’s understanding of the body–soul unity, the article analyzes the intramundanity and finitude of the human body, as well as its transfiguration through ascetic practices and divine grace. The Incarnation of Christ is examined as a central paradigm for rethinking embodiment, revealing the eschatological promise of glorified flesh. Concepts such as ipseity, self-affection, intentionality, and counter-intentionality are employed to articulate a phenomenological vision open to theological transcendence. Ultimately, this interdisciplinary approach affirms the possibility of a body transformed by grace and destined for resurrection.

1. Introduction

This text, which attempts a theo-phenomenological inquiry into the body, draws upon two main sources of inspiration. The first is the theological turn in contemporary phenomenology, particularly within the French school. The second is the ascetical and mystical experience within the Orthodox tradition, as especially articulated in writings concerning the body and its role in the pursuit of spiritual perfection, most notably in the Philokalia. Employing phenomenology as a method and Orthodox theology and spirituality of the body as a horizon of revealed meaning, this article engages two complementary and, at the same time, paradoxical dimensions: the body as finitude and, simultaneously, as the transfiguration of life.

We will be guided by the following questions: How can the concepts of the phenomenology of the body be brought into dialogue with those of Eastern Christian spirituality? In what ways can the immanent and finite character of the body be reconciled with the calling to communion and deification (theosis)? How does the body appear when viewed through the lens of Christ’s Incarnation and in light of Orthodox spirituality? What phenomenological characteristics of the body emerge within Philokalic spirituality? And what is revealed—both phenomenologically and theologically—within the tension between the “body of death” (Romans 7:24) and the “body of glory” (Philippians 3:21)?

2. Unity and Tension: Body, Flesh, and Soul

2.1. The Phenomenological Distinction Between Body and Flesh

Phenomenology has emphasized a fundamental distinction: that between flesh and body. Highlighting the uniqueness of our bodily existence, Husserl stated that the body “is not merely a physical body [Körper], but precisely a living body [Leib]” (Husserl 1960, p. 131, §144). We thus distinguish, on the one hand, the physical body—as object and exteriority—which, as a corpse, will eventually undergo decomposition and consists of the same material elements that compose the world; and, on the other hand, the flesh (or living body), which is an animated, sentient body through which I experience the world and myself as life: the body through which I feel, tire, love, and am affected. The self [le moi], as a body–soul unity, possesses an intentionality directed outward (Robberechts 1964, p. 25), yet it is not devoid of inward experience—of living one’s own life from within. Regardless of how one understands the body—whether as affectivity, emotion, or embodiment—any experience of the self necessarily entails the experience of one’s own body, which cannot ultimately be ignored and which implicates a co-experience of spatial and temporal situatedness.

This distinction has been taken up and developed further by other phenomenologists of the theological turn (see Henry 2015; Falque 2015; Depraz 2008). Michel Henry sharply separates the body from the flesh (see Gschwandtner 2019, p. 86), thereby reinstating, on the one hand, a form of dualism reminiscent of the ancient Greek soul–body division and, on the other, proposing a kind of monism of a dis-incorporated flesh (see Pappas 2020, p. 82). Emmanuel Falque criticizes this Spinozist-flavored monism, arguing that “there is no flesh without a body” (Falque 2016); the two are bound together despite the difficulty in grasping how the transition from one to the other occurs. A theo-phenomenology of the body, as proposed by Natalie Depraz, brings to light theological perspectives on the transfiguration and deification of the body through the prayer of the heart, as well as on the final resurrection (Depraz 2008).

Phenomenology is not concerned with the body as an object, which is the domain of disciplines such as medicine. “What matters to us is not the ‘object-body,’ but the lived experience of embodiment, the meaning of being incarnate, the significance of having and being a body” (Ciocan 2013, p. 17). At the limit, for others—as external observers—I may be merely a body of the flesh, albeit one with unique traits and composition; but for myself, I am fundamentally interiority, the flesh of the body, identity with myself, expression and singularity of the living person that I am. One might speak here of a new paradox: that of the flesh as identity and the body as alterity. Michel Henry, opposing the phenomenology of life to the phenomenology of the world, maintains that the flesh belongs to the former, while the body belongs to the latter (Henry 2015, §25). Yet since both are marked by finitude, they cannot be separated into a new dualism akin to the ancient Greek opposition between soul and body (psyche and soma) (Falque 2016, pp. 144–45). Finitude can, of course, be distinguished along Heideggerian lines: the flesh is exposed to the existential risk of nihilation while the body undergoes annihilation. Still, the former cannot be thought of as apart from the latter.

Contemporary phenomenology has sufficiently emphasized the identity of consciousness with the body—that every experience is that of an embodied consciousness, an identity that allows us to say that our body is, first and foremost, ourselves. We are body—this body in this history—rooted in a particular place and time since the body can never be bracketed out of the experience of the self (Lacoste 2004, pp. 7–8). Any phenomenological gaze toward the world or the self must account for the situatedness expressed in this primordial truth.

The tension between identity and difference in the relationship between self and body is also affirmed in theology: “In the fallen human being, the body—at once royal and mortal—both reveals and masks the person. Thus, between the person and his or her body there exists a relationship of identity and difference, one that is ambiguous to the point of the tragic” (Clément 1996, p. 8). Even though we are our bodies, there is also, at least as aspiration, an experience of transcendence, made inevitable by the body’s intrinsic finitude. We could justifiably say that we are more than our bodies—that we experience not only being a body but also having a body. We are a paradox in which our finitude, expressed through the body, encounters our desire for the absolute, manifested in our highest aspirations. Only a paradoxical anthropology can properly measure our days, affirming that the human being—constantly seeking higher meaning—is both openness and finitude. Clearly, this does not map directly onto the distinction between body and soul: both are called to a form of authenticity that, in its highest expressions, has a religious destiny.

2.2. The Distinction Between Flesh and Soul

Given that the flesh (Leib) is paired not only with the body (Körper) but also with the soul (Seele) (Cassin 2004, p. 216), we must add a second distinction—one familiar to the metaphysical and theological tradition of the West since Plato: the distinction between flesh (Leib) and soul (Seele). St. Gregory Palamas speaks of the two as a “pair”: “For this body has been given to us by God as a partner—or rather, it has been subjected to us as a partner” (Grigorie Palama 1977, para. 5). Yet the Platonic and Christian traditions differ: unlike Plato and Neoplatonism, Christianity does not embrace a dualism that considers matter inherently evil. Though the body is material, Christians do not view it as evil per se.

Even though Scripture often presents sarx/soma and pneuma/psyche as complementary—and sometimes antagonistic—terms, the Church Fathers did not hesitate to affirm the enduring and eternal bond between body and soul, grounded in the Logos’ assumption of human nature. The Incarnation of Christ is a “necessary condition” (Cassin 2004, p. 207) for attaining eternal life. The resurrection of bodies at the end of time is affirmed within a vision of the body–soul union that transcends dualism. At times, sarx serves metonymically to represent the entire human being: “If those days had not been cut short, no flesh would be saved. But for the sake of the elect, those days will be shortened” (Mt. 24:22; cf. Mk. 13:20); “all flesh shall see the salvation of God” (Lk. 3:6). The biblical qualities of sarx emphasize its intrinsic finitude: it is “weak” (Mt. 26:41); it perishes “like grass” and “like the flower of the field” (1 Pt. 1:24). For Paul, sarx has “an eminently moral sense” (Noje 2021, p. 241): it “cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 15:50) and “desires what is contrary to the Spirit” (Gal. 5:17).

Paul’s moral sense of sarx—emphasizing inclination toward sin—differs from that of contemporary phenomenology, which conceives of the flesh as the human being within the conditions of empirical, worldly experience (see Sigurdson 2008, p. 30). According to the experiential theology of the Church, the soma/sarx is called together with the soul to final resurrection, for it is the whole human person who rises. The body, understood here as a living phenomenological flesh, does not possess eternity in itself; rather, it has been restored through the Incarnation of the Logos and made immortal by His Resurrection. “His body rose in perfect soundness, for it was the body of none other than the Life Himself” (Athanasius 2018, para. 21). Beyond the life we live and feel from within—in our flesh and blood—Christ reveals a different kind of life: divine life, other than the biological life of this world, a life that overcomes death and includes our very bodies, promised to all who believe in Him. The notion of these glorified, transfigured bodies remains inaccessible to the positive sciences, for the eschatological future of the body does not submit to the laws of the natural order (Lacoste 2024, p. 167).

Philokalic literature reflects the biblical distinction between soul and body, sometimes adopting philosophical language. St. Gregory Palamas, for instance, emphasizes the soul’s role in fulfilling even the body’s potential: “The soul is the actuality of a body possessing organs and having the potentiality for life” (Gregory Palamas 1995b, para. 3). The soul has life “not only as an activity but also as its essence, since it is self-existent” (Gregory Palamas 1995b, para. 32) and thus is unaffected by death. Without being spatially contained in or bounded by the body, the soul supports and animates it, holding it together (Gregory Palamas 1995b, para. 61). This rejection of objectifying the soul–body divide in favor of a perichoretic understanding highlights the unity of the human being as a dual yet indivisible composition—a hallmark of patristic thought.

Another definition of the human being begins from the experience of finitude: “Man is the one who has understood what the body is: that it is perishable and transient. For such a one also understands the soul to be divine and immortal, the breath of God, united to the body for trial and for deification. And whoever understands the soul lives righteously and pleasingly before God, no longer subject to the body” (Antonie cel Mare 2013, para. 124). The argument here is that recognizing the body’s finitude leads to recognizing the immortality and superiority of the soul—a recognition that transforms human life morally, philosophically, and spiritually. While phenomenologically, the finitude of consciousness follows necessarily from bodily finitude (see Tommasi 2018, p. 98), theologically, bodily finitude implies the existence of an immortal soul.

The mingling of body and soul remains a mystery. What is certain is that the human being is one, even in this dual composition, and that human actions are both bodily and spiritual. Pain is felt by both body and soul; suffering in one propagates to the other, which participates in turn. The unity of soul and body, upheld by patristic theology, brings this theme close to phenomenological accounts of the body—a parallel that can also be traced in Scripture: “the biblical meaning of the body presents multiple similarities with the phenomenological meaning” (Noje 2021, p. 63).

The definition of Christ as both true God and true man led to an understanding of the soul–body relation as an interpenetration that preserves the mystery of their union and avoids objectifying distinctions. Since “neither the soul exists prior to the body, nor the body prior to the soul,” the two “begin to exist together” (Beauregard and Stăniloae 1995, p. 26). This unique mark of Christian thought—which affirms the resurrection of both soul and body—preserves the mystery of their union and mixture. It is the “existential mystery of man, the mystery of mingling, of the clay” (Stăniloae 1995, p. 60), “an existential human ‘mystery,’ the mystery of mingling” (Yannaras 2007, p. 45), which, without negating personal unity, is open to receiving the uncreated grace of the Holy Spirit and the life of God.

Yannaras suggests that the soul–body distinction may overlap with the ontological distinction between person and nature. The soul, as coming from God, would constitute one’s particularity, individuality, and personal uniqueness, while the body would pertain to material nature. The two are a mingling and a yoking: “It is a unitary blending (sygkrasis) and yoking (zeuxis)” (St. John Climacus) (Yannaras 2007, p. 45). The soul is imprinted in the body in an ineffable way, forming “the highest union (akra henôsis)” (Yannaras 2007, p. 46), a simultaneous identity and alterity (p. 61), as Maximus the Confessor teaches. This non-objectification has implications for how the soul and body are together constitutive of the human person, though the tension between them also reveals an axiological prioritization of the soul.

Yet Yannaras’s view is debatable, given that the human person is an embodied soul, defined through the body with a uniqueness as evident as that of the soul. Why should we prefer a metaphysical reduction of the body to nature when nature is a generic concept, while this body—my body—defines me individually? Orthodox tradition affirms the paradoxical union of soul and body in a finite existence with an infinite destiny in the eschaton. If Christ assumed human nature in His hypostasis, He assumed it as both body and soul; thus, nature should not be reduced to the body alone. Otherwise, Christ would have assumed only the body, without the soul—contradicting the Orthodox teaching expressed brilliantly by Leontius of Byzantium in his doctrine of enhypostasization: the assumption of human nature—body and soul—into the hypostasis of the Logos. For this reason, in my view, Yannaras’s opinion cannot be maintained.

The incomprehensible unity of soul and body is a unity within which a hierarchy operates, where the soul ought to lead. Christian teaching affirms that Adam’s body was initially created incorruptible—“material,” yet “not fully spiritual” (Simeon Noul Teolog 1977b, p. 126)—though not perfect. After the Fall, “the simplicity and goodness of his mind were intertwined with evil worldly concerns” (Symeon Metaphrastis 1984, para. 37), redirecting human intentionality from God toward the body and the world, intensifying the tension between soul and body.

Christian theology, like Platonic philosophy, affirms the soul’s superiority over the body. The body is the “outer self” (Hesychios the Priest 1979, para. 34), characterized by desire and finitude. The soul “gives life to the body” just as virtue and knowledge “give life to the soul” (Thalassios the Libyan 1981, IV.25). Without the soul, the body is inert—it becomes a corpse. In this “unity of contrasts” (Stăniloae 1995, p. 87), their bond may be complementary when they cooperate harmoniously or adversarial when they struggle against one another: “They are not contrary by nature, but complementary—though they may become contrary” (Stăniloae 1995, p. 83). Because of this dual potential, we may say that an unceasing tension exists between soul and body—a tension that does not develop into full-blown dualism, as in Gnosticism, Platonism, or Neoplatonism, but also does not disappear in this present age. Unlike Neoplatonism, where matter is evil because it is most distant from the One (Plotin 2003, I.8.7), patristic thought affirms the existence of evil spirits—fallen angels not tied to material bodies—thus undermining any reduction of evil to matter alone (Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite 1987, IV.27). The body, though not evil in itself, may become a tyrant, enslaving us to its passions. Yet spiritual bondage may also arise from the soul when passions unrelated to the body dominate. Christian anthropology has consistently taught that evil is defined by one’s distance or nearness to God.

The soul is not merely a product of the body, as materialist philosophy might claim, but being primary in the order of life, it bears a vital orientation toward God, who created it immortal. When infused with bodily passions, the soul’s orientation shifts—hence the necessity of asceticism. Ultimately, the soul should be oriented toward God and the body toward the soul; when this intentionality is reversed, the soul feeds on the body’s passions, and the human person drifts away from God.

3. Intramundanity

3.1. Ipseity and Mystery

Phenomenological consciousness, necessarily embodied, affirms the identity between the self and the body on the basis of affection and self-affection. The forgetfulness of the body is undone by affect, passions, pain, and pleasure. We know that we are our body because the body reminds us of it unceasingly. “Because I have a body (corps) and am a body (corps), I am exposed to everything that can affect me” (Lacoste 2024, p. 17). We name ipseity this embodied self-awareness, this concrete situatedness of the human being in the world in all its uniqueness. Here, we can discern two distinct processes of identification. On the one hand, the ipseity of our body is the outcome of a process of identification shaped through phenomenological constitution over time—both passive and active—through which we come to realize that the body affects us to such a degree that it cannot be excluded from the definition of who we are. The body, as perceived by transcendental phenomenological consciousness, is the result of this first identification.

On the other hand, the identification of the body with the self without remainder—that is, the reduction of the human being to mere flesh and of thought to “carnal-mindedness,” oriented toward self-love and the world—disregards what Christian anthropology calls the immortal soul. The risk of this atheistic reduction to the body, which ultimately becomes a reduction to the corporeal, is that it defines the human person according to desires seeking satisfaction and according to the body’s urgent needs. We would thus know what man is to the extent that we know what his body is. But does such a definition not ignore the absolute meaning of the human person, as witnessed by theology?

According to theological thought, the human being’s aspiration toward the absolute—his thirst for eternity and perfection—is a mark of the Creator God, a trace of His image in us. By nature, endowed with a remarkable desire for knowledge, the human person is also defined by an aspiration toward the absolute—an aspiration that will either fulfill or destroy all his projects, from the most inauthentic to the most authentic. We inject the absolute even into our most banal concerns, clearly illustrating the divine calling we carry deep within. When ignored, this calling manifests as a camouflaging of the sacred within the profane (Eliade 2005, pp. 154–58)—a presence of which we are often unaware.

Situated in the open, delivered to dramatic becoming, we do not know where to go—but we are at least sure of our misfit status in the world, which we interpret either as a critique of the world, of others—including God—or of ourselves. What cannot be extinguished within us is this ongoing play of the absolute, before which we stand as powerless witnesses. Our finitude, most visibly manifest in the finitude of our body, gives us a “tragic identity” (Lacoste 2018, p. 155): in relation to the desire for immortality, our temporality becomes dramatic because it is our very body that is subject to change, decay, and death. Existentially speaking, the paradox of the human being arises from the meeting between the infinite project of a being who ceaselessly self-transcends and the finitude that ultimately ends in death.

Therefore, however legitimate, the definition of the human person solely through the body reveals a deficiency of ipseity—a deficiency which, theologically framed, amounts to ignoring the highest meaning of the human being: the rejection of the call to divine and eternal life.

3.2. Affection and Self-Affection

Following Michel Henry, we may speak of the body in terms of affection and self-affection. When I touch a table, two events occur: first, I am affected by its coldness and solidity, but simultaneously, I self-affect—I feel, at the same time, my hand touching the table. Life is defined by its capacity to experience itself and to self-affect when it is affected. This distinction separates the objectivity of exteriority from the experience—or life—of interiority; it is the difference between affection and self-affection, between intentionality and originary impressions. The body is the locus in which life reveals and experiences itself; this revelation of life “consists in a pathos, an embrace without distance and without regard to a suffering and an enjoyment whose phenomenological material is indeed pure affectivity, a pure impressionality, the radically immanent self-affection that is nothing other than our flesh” (Henry 2015, §23). Two insights stand out in this passage: first, the identification of the body with life, and second, the framing of life in terms of the antinomic polarity of suffering and enjoyment.

In Eastern Christian spirituality, the identification of the body with life is not without its tension: he who possesses life is always exposed to its potential loss. Thus, insofar as the body is the body of life, it can also be the body of death. Its final form—the corpse—is mirrored by a spiritual death that marks separation from God, the source of life. A theology of the body that understands life as more than bodily existence perceives this ambivalence. Though the experience of life is without distance, it is no less true that the intentionality of desire is fueled through the body, exposing it to excess by way of natural affections. The negativity of passion grows from the root of natural affection, shaped by an intentionality dominated by the originary impressions of our embodied life.

We must emphasize the link between intentionality and impressions: the former is rooted in the latter, and Philokalic texts often underline this relationship. Intentionality may become captive to the reign of the passions, what we might call captive intentionality.

Theology acknowledges the affections of the body but recognizes their danger when they produce not balance in existence but excess and passion. Affection and self-affection acquire a negative dimension when they open the way to the Fall through an excess of worldliness that opposes God’s call. In the unfolding of the process by which affection becomes passion, the soul becomes enslaved to a desire that cannot be satisfied except temporarily—and even when gratification occurs, the infernal cycle resumes. The person thus becomes dominated by passions that take hold with their own complicity. And it is the body that first suffers the weight of this condition—an orientation opposed to grace, corresponding to the movement of the fall from God’s will into self-will. Through bodily passions and through passion in general, the human being becomes affected by spiritual death, fleeing from God. This is a lethal affection coupled with a moribund self-affection that uses life only to deepen the dominion of finitude and, ultimately, death. Under the weight of such dying self-affection, biological life extinguishes spiritual life.

The dialectic of pleasure and pain, as described by St. Maximus the Confessor, is rooted in the primal passion of philautia—self-love (Maximos the Confessor 1981a, III.8). As a sign of the workings of the passions, moribund self-affection marks a slavery that knows neither “the freedom of the children of God” nor the true life that Christ brought through His Incarnation. For this reason, the attainment of apatheia—freedom from the passions—becomes, in the Church’s ascetic tradition, a goal equivalent to liberation. Opposed to moribund self-affection stands ascetical self-affection, a form of self-experience that opens the soul to the grace of God and makes liberation from passion possible.

3.3. Intramundanity: The Body as World

The body is the world reaching me, the world becoming me—one with my ipseity. It is not merely the boundary between self and world but, far more deeply, the very mode in which I am already part of the world—one with its rationality, its weight, and its cosmic beauty. The condition of the body is material, aligned with nature, for “nature is poured into the body” (Antonie cel Mare 2013, para. 135). Understood as a microcosm, the human being shares both the advantages and the burdens of the world: beauty and rationality as expressed in the body’s living, biological existence—but also finitude and the blindness of the world. If he remains within the intramundanity of his intentionalities alone, man risks losing the path to the freedom of the children of God.

In Philokalic spirituality, the “world” refers both to “material things” (Maximos the Confessor 1981a, II.53) and to “attachment to sensory things and worldly proclivities” (Theoliptos 1995a, p. 177). Taking both senses into account, St. Isaac the Syrian defines detachment from the world not as a departure from the body but as separation from bodily things: “I do not call separation the departure from the body, but from the bodily things” (Isaac of Nineveh 1923, I.2). This virtue involves an emptying of the mind from the noematic contents of the world—a kind of “de-intentionalized consciousness” (Ștefănescu 2025, p. 36). Such a suspension of worldly intentionality does not negate other forms of intentionality—namely, those directed toward God. Still, the operation of captive intentionality remains undeniable: the work of the will of the flesh, an intentionality that estranges us from ourselves, pulling us toward bodily desires and the finitude they impose.

This captivity is, in fact, caused by self-love (philautia), which St. Maximus the Confessor defines as “a mindless love for the body” (Maximos the Confessor 1981a, III.57) and “the mother of the passions” (II.8). In pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain, self-love becomes the root of ever-new passions (Maxim Mărturisitorul 1994, para. 33–34), and thus a source of evil and of the idolatry of one’s own body (I.7). Captive intentionality is rooted in our affections, which, when unsupervised, degenerate into passions—pathways of the fall and of lost spiritual freedom. A factual entanglement binds us to our body as to an inescapable and tragic destiny of finitude. It is an intentionality capable of “changing the very nature of the mind” (Antonie cel Mare 2013, para. 7) and of darkening the soul through sorrow and pleasure (para. 95). Being directed toward the body, this captive intentionality becomes unable to perceive “the realm of prayer” or to grasp the path of spiritual blessedness (Evagrios the Solitary 1979, para. 152).

The Fathers call this kind of thinking carnal-mindedness: an intentionality directed primarily toward the body and the world. It is a kind of thought enslaved: “The intellect’s attachment to the senses enslaves it to bodily pleasure” (Thalassios the Libyan 1981, II.55). The danger of this carnal mind is blindness to spiritual reality, reducing the human being to the prison of his intramundanity. “Those who pursue the carnal mode of life and in whom the will of the flesh is imperious—who are, quite simply, carnal—are not able to conform to God’s will (cf. Rom. 8:8). Their judgment is eclipsed and they are totally impervious to the rays of divine light […]. To such people applies the prophetic statement that comes from God’s own mouth: ‘My Spirit shall not remain in these men, for they are flesh’ (Gen. 6:3)” (Nikitas Stithatos 1995, para. 5). The noematic content of the mind, filled with non-spiritual and bodily images, transforms the human being into a carnal being—even in understanding. To become free, man must engage in battle with himself—in his own body.

The ascetic struggle begins with a struggle against the body we are—with a struggle against ourselves. Through the fight against passions and the acquisition of virtues, man combats self-love, detaches from the world, and enters communion with God. To live in the body does not mean to live according to the will of the body or of the world but to live the true life brought by Christ: “those who live in the flesh and lead an existence in the field of the world do not live according to the flesh and are not conformed to this world, but through their life in the world practice beforehand the life they are hoping for” (Gregory of Nyssa 2012, p. 147).

Numerous Philokalic passages stress that the purpose of asceticism and self-restraint is not an end in itself but serves the subordination of the body to the soul and the preparation for spiritual knowledge. Liberation “from base servitude” (Thalassios the Libyan 1981, II.15)—from passions—and the acquisition of apatheia do not eliminate care for the body. On the contrary, the body is to be considered an enemy when it resists the will of God and a friend when it serves the soul. Enemy and friend at once, the body must be vigilantly guided and ascetically governed in order to attain true life and the knowledge of God.

Given the importance of the body in defining the human person and enabling communion with the world, with others, and with God, theology emphasizes the responsibility we bear toward our body (see Stăniloae 1995, p. 94). Depending on one’s relation to God, this responsibility may become self-centered—manifest in an unspiritual, domineering body—or a responsibility before God, in which the soul spiritualizes the body through the practice of virtue, love, and prayer.

Yet the struggle against the carnal mind is not limited to the body; it entails a new orientation of the mind—a reorientation of attention toward the attainment of spiritual dispassion (apatheia). Without dispassion of the soul, that of the body has no value: “A dispassionate soul is one thing, a dispassionate body is another. For the soul, when dispassionate, sanctifies the body with its own luminosity and with the radiance of the Holy Spirit. But bodily dispassion by itself confers no benefit on the person who possesses it” (Symeon the New Theologian 1995, para. 58).

Intentionality must be transformed from captive to ascetical, first oriented toward one’s own body, and then—through prayer—toward God in an “apophatic intentionality,” directed toward the incomprehensible divine (see Turcan 2020, p. 8; 2021, p. 9). Through this reorientation, the intellect “turns away from external things,” “concentrates on what is within,” and “is restored to itself.” “By means of prayer, it ascends with all its loving power and affection to the knowledge of God” (Theoliptos 1995b, para. 1).

Thus, the ascetic practice of the body and the reorientation of the mind toward God through prayer engages the acquisition of both bodily and spiritual virtues, purifying the person in preparation for spiritual knowledge. Ultimately, this entire struggle is synergistic, involving not only human effort but also the work of divine grace. The unity between body and soul means that the acts of the body are felt in the soul, and the sanctification of the soul becomes visible in the body. The body becomes glorified flesh through the outpouring of the grace of God.

4. Interpersonality and Communion Through Grace

4.1. Interpersonality

The phenomenological problem of intersubjectivity, raised by Husserl in the “Fifth Meditation” of the Cartesian Meditations (Husserl 1960), was reconfigured by Jean-Luc Marion through a different determination of the ego than that of the modern subject—namely, the gifted one (adonné). The adonné is the one who receives their identity from the phenomenon they receive, whether that be another person or even God Himself (see Marion 2013, p. 483; see also Turcan 2016, pp. 287–318).

In Orthodox experiential theology, interpersonality becomes possible through self-renunciation and the spiritualization of the body. The human person, who is understood existentially, is an openness toward the world and toward alterity (Yannaras 2007, pp. 47–48). The mundane dimension of the body enables communication and, ultimately, communion—the body serves as a bridge toward things and toward other persons (Stăniloae 1995, p. 93). Much like Marion’s adonné, the person receives himself from within communion, becoming sanctified both by the grace of God and by ascetic struggle, which affirms the importance of the body: “But man can reach this full knowledge and union with God and with others only through the body—yet only by means of a deeper spiritualization of the body, not by its abolition. Thus, man is made to embrace through his body all things—from God Himself to the deepest roots of the world grounded in God” (Stăniloae 1995, p. 94). In order to attain ever-deeper communion with both God and one’s fellow human beings, the struggle against egoism—provoked by self-love—results in the spiritualization of the body. The model for this transformation is offered by Christ through His Incarnation.

4.2. The Incarnation of Christ

The paradox that we are—immortal souls united with finite bodies—is assumed and resolved through a higher paradox: that of the Son of God becoming man through the Incarnation—true God and true man, two natures in one person, the divine-human. Phenomenologically speaking, the Incarnation of Christ is manifestation, appearance, and revelation: a revealing both of what the human being can become through Christ and of God’s love for humanity. The passage from the Gospel of John stating that Christ took on our flesh, our living body, becoming man—“The Word became flesh (sarx)” (John 1:14)—does not refer merely to the assumption of a soulless body but to the whole human being, body and soul.

Christ assumed our humanity—body and soul—into His divine hypostasis as the Son of the Father, the second hypostasis of the Holy Trinity. The hypostatic union represents the paradoxical union of the two natures, divine and human, in the hypostasis of the Logos, through which God “did not change into the nature of earthly flesh,” nor did the human flesh “transform into the Logos Himself,” but each nature remained “in its proper definition and logos,” assumed in Christ, the God-man (Chiril al Alexandriei 1994, p. 33). Union with God by grace was granted to humanity when man was created “in the image of God,” and it was fulfilled in the hypostatic union in Christ, in which the two natures can no longer be separated, and the gap between man and God was overcome (Nellas 1987, pp. 32–33).

Through the Incarnation, Christ “renewed the whole man in Himself,” and “He restores it in an act of re-creation that leaves no grounds for any reproach against the Creator-Logos” (Nikitas Stithatos 1995, para. 93). This renewal—synonymous with deification (theosis)—was accomplished by Christ not only through His body but also through His divinity (Simeon Noul Teolog 1977a, p. 185). “He manifested Himself to us in soul, body, and divinity so that, as God, He could deliver soul and body from death” (Thalassios the Libyan 1981, IV.59).

4.3. Primordial Spatiality as the Place of Grace’s Bestowal

How might we rethink primordial spatiality in phenomenological terms if we acknowledge that the renewal of the human being takes place through the grace given by God here and now? In grounding spatiality in the lived body, Husserl distinguished between a factual spatiality—the place where the body happens to be at a given moment, which can always become a there—and a primordial spatiality, represented by our body itself, by the here that we ourselves are and which can never become a there. This is the I-point (Ich-Punkt), the egological point from which all distances are measured (Husserl 1973, §64; see Ciocan 2013, p. 79).

In religious experience, such a phenomenological constitution of space acquires new features. The descent of the Spirit of God into the human person takes place in the primordial here—that is, in me, in my body. Every pilgrimage to a sacred space ultimately seeks to enact this encounter, whereby the factual here of the visited hierophanic place is doubled by the expected event of meeting the divine, which takes place in the primordial here that I am as an embodied being. This is the place where the primordial here takes on the features of a pre-eschatological here—where the “already” meets the “not yet,” where the deification of man “as much as is possible for a human being” occurs, and where one begins to experience the Kingdom, in the words of Scripture: “The Kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21).

This indwelling by grace overturns the ordinary mode by which space is constituted through the body: endowed with existential depth, the eschatological space opened by religious experience becomes, in a new sense, primordial. It embodies the paradox of here–there: the here is already, but not yet, a pre-eschatological experience, while the there is revealed as an eschatological anticipation of the Kingdom of Heaven at the end of time. Interpreted existentially, eschatological spatiality emerges as axiologically superior even to the primordial spatiality represented by the body we are. Thus, one could say, in the deepest theological sense, that God is closer to us than we are to ourselves.

4.4. Intentionality Toward God and Counter-Intentionality as Grace

We have previously affirmed that captive intentionality, oriented toward the body and the world and reducing thought to carnal-mindedness, can be transformed—both into an ascetical intentionality and into an intentionality directed toward God: an apophatic intentionality oriented toward divine mystery. This intentionality toward God can take several forms, the most frequently mentioned in Philokalic literature being attention, prayer, and love. Attention is reoriented from the world toward God: “When the intellect no longer dallies with dispassionate thoughts about various things, it has not necessarily reached the realm of prayer; for it may still be contemplating the inner essences of these things” (Evagrios the Solitary 1979, para. 57). As with all spiritual ascents, the grace of God accompanies the human effort, erasing the imprints of bodily memories and replacing them with “the peace of uninterrupted love” (Diadochos of Photiki 1979, para. 88), which supports this intentional reorientation of thought—and, in fact, of the whole person. In this new experience of communion with God, the old memories of the world are replaced in the heart with “the stamp of divine knowledge” (Philimon 1981, p. 345).

Apophatic intentionality may also take the form of prayer, through which the body itself participates in the work of divine grace. The Spirit of God can surpass the natural operations of affectivity and reason—both directed toward the sensible and the intelligible—and “completely transfigures body and soul and makes them more divine” (Maximos the Confessor 1981b, I.46). The soul’s radiance through grace “appears in the body as in a mirror,” healing and to some extent already transfiguring it in this life (Ioan Scărarul 1980, XXX.11). The Taboric light, as described in the hesychast tradition, is shared with the body so that “the glory of the Godhead becomes the body’s glory” (Gregory Palamas 1995a, para. 4), thereby deifying even the body. It is the work of divine love that leads to the transcendence of the self (Depraz and Mauriac 2023, p. 125). Human intentionality is thus answered by the counter-intentionality of God’s love.

For a theo-phenomenology of the body, the concept of counter-intentionality is fundamental (Rebidoux 2017, pp. 5–6). But here, a distinction must be made between divine counter-intentionality and human counter-intentionality. In the first case, grace must be understood as uncreated energy—a gift God offers to the human being for the purpose of deification. In other words, it is not merely the awareness of another’s counter-intentionality that helps constitute one’s own ipseity (as in Marion’s adonné, who receives the self from the other), but something far more: the presence of grace, which is necessary for spiritual progress and sanctification.

This efficacy is not merely empathy, nor is it simply the result of awakening within myself a higher self-image through an encounter with the other and their counter-intentionality. It is the very presence of grace that God gives freely to unite the human being with Himself. Divine counter-intentionality, then, is a counter-intentionality that—taking the form of uncreated grace—exerts power over the whole person, body and soul: “You partake of angelic life and attain an incorruptible and hence almost bodiless state when you have cleansed your intellect through tears, have through the power of the Spirit resurrected your soul even in this life, and with the help of the Logos have made your flesh—your natural human form of clay—a resplendent and fiery image of divine beauty” (Gregory of Sinai 1995, para. 45).

Grounded in the interpersonal love of the Trinity, human interpersonality entails two forms of counter-intentionality: that of the person I encounter and that of God, who addresses me through the presence of the other. In every person, I meet the image of God, and in the imperfect love I practice—including the command to love my enemies—I activate God’s love for me, always present. “For whoever does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20). The manifest revelation of the brother is accompanied by a revelation of God’s calling, heard in the person of the brother—in whom the believer sees the image of God and His love.

Thus, interpersonality must be thought of as a triple relation: (1) with oneself, through an ascetical intentionality and the struggle against self-love (philautia); (2) with the other, who bears God’s image and, through their counter-intentionality, calls me toward spiritualization and self-discovery; (3) with God, who loved me first and who summons me to love—sometimes precisely through the presence of the other—enacting a divine counter-intentionality in the form of revelation, love, and grace. Theology envisions full communion through grace as ecclesial communion. The foundational truth is that the Church is defined as the Body of Christ and that believers are members of this body: “Christ is not a text but a living Person, and he abides in his body, the Church” (Florovsky 1972, p. 14).

Through the Eucharist, Christ “incorporates Himself into our body,” and we become “co-bodied with Him, and flesh of His flesh and bone of His bones” (Simeon Noul Teolog 1977b, p. 158). As the Son of God, Christ gives life to the members of His ecclesial body through the grace of deification, by which the faithful are united with Him: “for He embraces them as the soul embraces the body, enabling them to be in Him as His own members” (Gregory Palamas 1995a, para. 2). The interpersonal communion made visible in the Church will be brought to fullness in the age to come, after the resurrection of the body.

4.5. The Body of the Resurrection and of Glory

According to Orthodox teaching, the assumption of our fallen humanity and its restoration through the Resurrection opens an entirely new path for understanding the body and life. “He, indeed, assumed humanity that we might become God” (Athanasius 2018, para. 54). Regardless of the terminology used (see Russell 2004, pp. 333–44), deification (theosis) is now the human project: man is called to become like God through virtue—a project with eschatological fulfillment and thus infinite openness. The hierarchy of theosis follows the anthropological hierarchy: “the flesh is deified by the soul, and the soul is deified by the Logos, just as the Logos himself is deified by the Father” (Russell 2004, p. 152). What Christ accomplished in His unique Person—through the union of the two natures, divine and human, and through the communicatio idiomatum—the faithful can likewise achieve by the grace of God. Humanity, as body and soul, encounters the undying life of God and can receive it.

Orthodox spirituality interprets this possibility as participation in the Eucharistic Body of Christ and as a new self-understanding: being part of the mystical Body of the Church. If deified humanity is the body assumed by the Logos through the Incarnation, then this body is the same as the Body of Christ in the Eucharist (see Russell 2004, p. 228).

The facticity of Dasein must now be rethought. “Thrown into the world,” Heidegger’s Dasein understands itself as being-toward-death, working out its authenticity from the one certainty that comes from the future—death. But in the context of faith in the Resurrection, the human being can no longer be phenomenologically reduced to facticity. Instead, man understands himself as “a being toward resurrection and eternity” (Stăniloae 1995, p. 97). To facticity now corresponds a higher calling—one that comes from beyond death—and traces the outline of a theological phenomenology that speaks of the eschatological I (moi eschatologique)—“the figure of the ego in which the relation to the Absolute is his lifeblood and suffices to define man” (Lacoste 2004, pp. 57–58).

The final resurrection, accomplished by the Son of God, promises to all the saved the resurrection of their bodies as well, which shall be transfigured and glorified. The power of resurrection and transfiguration is first visible in the relics of the saints, which attest to the working grace and power of God in those who believe. The eschatological transfiguration will also include the transfiguration of the cosmos itself, which, like the body, will be transformed “into something more divine” so as to be fitting for our resurrection (Gregory Palamas 1995b, para. 2). At the final resurrection of humankind, “The glory will be added to their bodies” (Barsanuphius and John 2007, Q. 607); in these glorified bodies, “their natural properties have been overcome by the superabundance of His glory,” and “God alone is made manifest through the soul and the body” (Maximos the Confessor 1981b, II.88).

To think of such a “glorified reduction” (réduction glorieuse) is to perceive the transition “from a state or attitude (stasis) dominated by finite and atomized mundanity to another state (anastasis) that is a rational transcendental alterity […]. The strength of Christianity lies in its power to complete even the body itself: each person may be transfigured in his or her own body” (Depraz 2008, p. 77). The glorification of resurrected bodies does not imply a return to Adam’s prelapsarian body but rather to the body of Christ after His Resurrection. Therefore, the glorified reduction—a theological reduction through which the resurrection of the body may be conceived—is both a Christological and Anastatic reduction.

5. Conclusions

Phenomenology underscores the finitude of our body and its difference from the mere corporeal object. Theology acknowledges the intramundanity of the body but brings to light the tension between body and soul. The ascetical exercises of Philokalic spirituality aim at liberation from the passions and the restoration of the proper hierarchy: the body must submit to the soul and the soul to God. This is the possibility of obedience to God, lost through Adam’s fall and reopened through the Incarnation of Christ. More than that, it is an opening toward deification through grace and the transfiguration of the body even in this life, culminating in the glorified body at the resurrection at the end of time.

The phenomenological concepts employed in this analysis of Philokalic spirituality of the body illustrate this return of the human being to the saving God: the dramatic ipseity of man is called to deification by grace; captive intentionality is transformed into apophatic intentionality; counter-intentionality takes the form of deifying grace; intersubjectivity becomes interpersonality and communion; and the worldly situatedness of the human being is doubled by a situatedness in God—existence is completed by theo-sistence. All of this points to a transfiguration of human life in its entirety, one that does not reject the body nor its destiny.

The transfiguration after the final resurrection will also mean the glory that God will bestow upon the bodies of the saved—bodies made like the glorified body of the risen Christ. This is a fundamentally theological theme, one that answers the boldest aspirations of the human desire for the absolute. Phenomenology may chart these desires as impossible wishes in this world or, as Kant does, articulate them as postulates: the immortality of the soul, the freedom of the will, and the existence of God. Yet theologically, they can be discerned as hope—a hope in which the very meaning of our life is revealed if we dare to articulate it fully.

The glory of the body in the Kingdom of God will mean the endless experience of the Good promised by the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ. It entails what we now dare affirm only by faith and as anticipatory hope: a love that never ends; the immortality of the soul in the very body we are, now adorned with perfection and glory, free from passions and suffering; life with those we love, in the eternal communion of love in the Kingdom of God; the definitive victory of the Good and the restoration of the whole being.

A phenomenology of the body may reflect on the possibility of this eschatological fulfillment, but theology hopes for it, awaits it through faith and practice, and calls upon the inestimable gift of grace. Orthodox spirituality in general—and Philokalic spirituality in particular—confirms the truth that man is called to resurrection as a complete person, body and soul. The evidence of finitude we now experience will be transfigured into the freedom and eternal communion of love with God and with those who have become His children.