Opinion on the body in antiquity and Christianity

It is often heard that only Renaissance humanism freed the body from the curse to which it was condemned by medieval asceticism, expressed in the sentence: «Body, world, devil overpowering. » In fact, we need to go much deeper into the past. Indian wisdom seems to have realized it first once that evil is not only outside us but above all within us. It is good and evil in every human being. Good is spiritual, evil bodily because there are passions in the body. These are then, as we read in the Buddha’s biography, the source of all pain (compare the story of L. N. Tolstoy the hundred Kay is evil).
Greek philosophy has made this idea even clearer. “Man, that’s the soul!” says Socrates in Plato dialogue. So the body is something that does not belong to us, from which it is we must purify ourselves to draw closer to God, who is spiritual. Pythagoras is given the familiar sentence that the body is «The grave of the soul.» This theory, widespread at the end of antiquity, Christians have resisted fundamentally. God created the whole man, that is, the body. And what God created is, of course, all right. The fundamental article of faith is: “I believe in the resurrection of the body.” Why should we get up in the body again if was that something that did not belong to our perfection? Jesus Christ became man and took on the body: the Word becomes the body that happened … (John 1:14). The body of Christ is, therefore, the source of our sanctification.
THAT LIFE IS THE LIGHT OF PEOPLE 
For centuries, Christians have denied burial by burning.
They have entrusted the hope of their flesh to the earth, as if it were a seed, to sprout. From the beginning they worshiped the remnants of the martyrs’ saints, because here the power of grace in some way already It operates. This is also confirmed by the belief in the Assumption of the Virgin Mary in the glorified body. “Therefore, let us protect our body,” writes St. Cyril of Jerusalem, «this is our capital. One day we will account to the Lord for what we have done with the body. Nobody there is nothing we can do. We lie with our mouth, we pray with our mouth, we sin with uncleanness in our flesh, and we keep purity. The hand holds the stolen, the hand passes the gift.
Because the body helps in everything, it will bear the consequences
of works. » “Man is a mixture of two elements.” (St. Gregor Naz.)
However, the fact that the body is God’s work and that it is good does not mean that it is equal and of the same nature to the soul. Their qualities are in some ways contradictory: the soul is immortal, the body perishes, the thought flies everywhere, the body is bound by the place, the soul flies to God and to eternal truths, the bodily senses perceive only that which is material. We would never believe that it is so “mixed.” two elements,», writes St. Gregor Nazarian. Nobody else
would be able to combine dual qualities into one man; it is the visible work of God, the greatest wonder of the world. Creator, he did nothing in vain. So why did he create this strange one «mixture,»? St. Gregor finds only one answer:there was a need for a mediator between spirit and matter. God leads everything to unity. The gap between the Creator and creation was bridged by Jesus Christ, the true God and the true man, for one is a mediator between God and men (1 Tim 2: 5 ). The chasm between the clergy In the mortal body, creatures and matter are bridged by the second mediator, created according to Christ, that is, man, who is both spirit and matter. The goal of Christ is the “commodity shield” of all creatures; the goal of man is «spiritualized» matter. V. Soloviov cleverly expands this idea in recent times. It deprives the human soul the material world raises his “gravity” and elevates him to heights. God created the body beautifully, harmoniously, making it an obedient instrument, like a harp of the soul. The senses are like strings on which the soul plays its eternal song. If the body could speak, writes Theodore of Cyrus, he would say about the soul: “Together we went the way of this life. You are without me she did nothing, she collected treasures with my help
virtues … »