Prof. Louis Aldrich, Taiwan
: Ethical Implications of "And He Arose From the Dead"The declaration of the Synod of Toledo, "and He arose from the dead" is rich implications for the whole moral life of Christians. Here I will limit myself to one important implication that is relevant to many of the contemporary problems in human life ethics and bio-ethics: the reality of the resurrection of the body confirms, first, the intrinsic unity of body and soul in the human person and, second, the goodness of the body as not only created by God, but as open to share in the eternal life of God Himself.
The importance of the goodness of the body and its intrinsic unity with the soul is found in the early Church's battle with Gnosticism and the Manichaeism. These two forms of dualism held a dichotomy between the spiritual soul, which was good, and the material body, which was evil. Hence, no intrinsic unity was possible between soul and body; in fact, the good soul was trapped in the evil body as a kind of prisoner. The practical implications of this position led to the following: procreation was evil; hence, contraception was not only permitted but encouraged; further, since the body and soul had no real unity, any kind of sexual practice was permissible as long as procreation was avoided (the evil done in the body did not affect the goodness of the soul); finally, marriage was not good, but a necessary evil to be tolerated for the sake of the weak (the strong were those very few who could avoid procreating but complete abstinence).
Fathers of the Church such as Clement of Alexandria, St. Ambrose, St. John Chrysostom and St. Augustine analysed and answered the Gnostics and Manichaes. St. Augustine, using as his starting point the great dignity, value and goodness of the body as proven by the Resurrection, as well as its unity with the soul, answered the dualists in the following way: both body and soul are good, moral evil is in the spiritual will, not in material body; marriage is so good it is a sacrament (because it provides graces by which both the married couple and their children are to be sanctified); marriage has as its intrinsic requirements openness to procreation in every conjugal act and exclusive fidelity to one's spouse; hence, contraception and any sex outside of marriage is forbidden. The answer of St. Augustine, as summarising the position of the Church Fathers, has been the basic position of the Church into the modern era.
Today the Church is facing a new kind of dualism rooted in a split between technology and ethics. While not calling the body evil, this dualism judges it to be of no ethical significance. This is seen pro-abortion position that the developing human body has no ethical standing until it achieves (no one knows how) "personhood"; that contraception, which blocks only the biological processes of procreation, is permissible as long a married couple are seeking deeper spiritual union. Finally, William May has pointed out that the whole field of artificial reproduction, including artificial insemination, in vitro fertilisation, cloning, and embryonic stem cell research, has at its root a denial that the human body is a spiritualised body: a true unity of body and soul.
What is to save us from the modern dualists? Again it will be a deeper reflection on the meaning of "and he rose from the dead"; and a way of explaining it which helps those in the Church and outside of it to understand that the intrinsically spiritualised body is not a playground for sexual gratification nor a laboratory for technological manipulation, but is, as St. Paul tells us, "the temple of the Holy Spirit" and is "for the Lord."