Wittgenstein on Soul and Body

The human body is the best picture of the human soul.

- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (1953), II.iv

A caricature of the Christian hope paints Christians believing that when they die, their souls turn into angels, and they float off to heaven to play the harp. A caricature of the Christian faith paints Christians believing that the spiritual things, such as prayer and a personal experience of God, are more important than the physical things, such as health and work for political reform.  Real Christianity is far from either.

What I like about this brief remark from the great Twentieth Century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein is how it latches onto something closer to the Christian hope and faith then these caricatures. In the New Testament, there are very few distinctions drawn between a person’s soul and body.The sharp contrast between the soul and the body is something more at home in Greek Philosophy then Christianity.  It is more common for the writers and figures of the New Testament to address people as whole people – soul and body.

In fact, the New Testament often blurs the lines between soul and body in a way that is suggestive that perhaps the human body is the best picture of the human soul: Paul encourages some new Greek converts to Christianity to stop going to pagan temples and using prostitutes because as they take part in these physical activities they damage their soul (1 Corinthians 5-6, 10-11); Jesus insists that the character of a person can be known through their actions (Matthew 7:15-20, 15), physically being dunked in water as well as eating some bread and wine is unreservedly said to affect a persons spirituality, and Paul clearly lays out the Christian hope as being the physical, bodily resurrection from the dead – that is, the way Christians in the future will experience spiritual reconciliation with God is through a resurrected body (1 Corinthians 15).

If you’ve never read any of these bits of the Bible I encourage you to check them out. They make it impossible to believe that Christianity is a religion that cares only about the spiritual, and they are suggestive of a way to understand the interrelatedness of the material and mysterious parts of the person through a simple holism. A holism I think Wittgenstein sums up nicely.