SPIRIT and FLESH. – The antithesis of biblical anthropology between the perishable and the enduring in man, analogous to the antithesis between man and God already clear in Is. 31:3.
In the ethical psychological language of the New Testament, two elements compose man: one external and one internal (Mt. 15:17-20); the first, the body (σῶμα), to which animal life (ψυχή) is connected, is without moral significance and may be considered in itself indifferent to justification and salvation (I Cor. 6:12-13), while the second, seat of thoughts and feelings (καρδία, νόμος), is before God fundamental and decisive. “The outer man is decaying, and the inner man is being renewed” (II Cor. 4:16-18); being “flesh and blood,” the outer man is excluded from the Kingdom of God (Mt. 16:17; I Cor. 15:50).
To the first, derived from the old Adam, sin is connected, and death which is its “wage” (Rom. 5:12-21; 6:23); the new Adam, Christ, remedies this in Baptism by renewing man, immersing him in His mystery of death and resurrection (ibid. 6:1-13). Yet in man here below, the struggle between the outer and inner man remains dramatic, between the old man of sin and the new man of justice (ibid. 7:5-25). The first, called the “body of sin,” of death (ibid. 6:6; 7:24), which tends toward moral and physical disintegration, is usually called “flesh” in the pejorative sense already appearing in Gen. 6:3, 12 (cf. Is. 40:6; Eccli. 14:18; I Cor. 1:20) and widespread among the Stoics. “Flesh” is human nature abandoned to itself, therefore fragile, because devoid of God, and deadly, because vitiated by sin which nests its germ, concupiscence (Jn. 1:13); it is connected to sin by origin and tendency (Rom. 6:12-18, 13). The opposite of flesh, or animated matter (σάρξ) enclosing the ψυχή, was the invisible dynamism of man called “spirit” (πνεῦμα; I Cor. 5:5); the “fragile flesh” resists the “ready spirit” (Mt. 26:41; Mk. 14:38) in which God or the Spirit of God (Wis. 1:6-7; Job 10:12; Prov. 8:31) operates with mysterious efficacy (Jn. 3:6-8; 6:64). The dualism “flesh-spirit” (πνεῦμα-σάρξ) is one of the great antitheses of Pauline preaching.
To the “flesh of sin” (Rom. 8:3) is opposed the πνεῦμα (“spirit”): ibid. 8:1-15; Gal. 5:13-25. Flesh with its vices and concupiscences (Gal. 5:24) is the antagonist, often personified, of the “spirit” (ibid. 5:17). The spirit, which is fundamental for the divine Holy Spirit, in the inmost part of the regenerate man and the new spirit infused by God (foretold by Ez. 11:19-20; 36:26-27; cf. Ps. 50:12), constitutes the new man or new creature (Eph. 4:22-24; Col. 3:9-10; II Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15); it removes “the body of flesh” or carnal (Col. 2:11).
The term spirit is used 145 times by St. Paul; although the general sense is unquestionable, the precise sense of spirit is debatable about 70 times, there being an intimate interpenetration between the thinking principle of man (called spirit in I Cor. 2:11; 5:3; 7:34; etc.) or his way of thinking (ibid. 2:12 “spirit of the world”; etc.), and the activity of the Holy Spirit in man (ibid. 14:12; 32; I Thess. 5:19; II Thess. 2:2; the charisms) or man under the influence of the Holy Spirit (I Cor. 14:14-16; “with your spirit”; Gal. 6:18; Phil. 4:23; II Tim. 4:22; Philem. 25), and the person of the Holy Spirit. A typical case of the intersection of these three semantic aspects is Rom. 8:2-16, where spirit occurs 17 times in various senses, difficult to specify; the Vulgate writes Spiritus with a capital only 4 times, while R. Cornely intends the Holy Spirit 11 times; in Gal. 5:16-25 the Vulgate, out of 7 cases, considers Spiritus a proper name only once, R. Cornely never, J. B. Lightfoot always. In general, the expressions “Spirit of God, Spirit of Christ, Holy Spirit” are equivalent to designate the divine Person; but “Holy Spirit” rather indicates His influence or charisma (Acts 6:5; 10:38; 11:24; 13:52; II Cor. 6:6); the surest criterion is to examine whether personal functions are attributed to the Spirit or whether it is distinguished from the other two divine Persons. Rival of flesh, the spirit is, more than the Person of the sanctifying Spirit, His action in the soul or, better, the soul itself vivified by Him.
In the New Testament, the divine personal Spirit is the force that presides over the Incarnation, the founding and development of the Kingdom of God (Lk. 1:15, 35, 41, 67; 2:25-27; Mt. 3:16; 4:1; 10:20; 12:28; Lk. 4:1; 14:10; 17:16; Acts 7:5-15). The Acts of the Apostles constantly highlight the action of the divine Spirit, supreme messianic gift (Acts 2:17) in the early Church (Acts 1:2, 8; 2:2-33; 4:8; 8:17-19; 10:44-47; etc.; I Cor. 12-14).
St. Paul, especially, insists that the divine Spirit is reflected in the spirit which, within every Christian, is the dynamic principle of a supernatural life: it is a heavenly gift and the human spirit transformed, it is the ontological justification in divine adoption, an earnest of eternal life (Rom. 5-8). In Pauline style, life in Christ identifies with life “in the spirit.” Hence the constant exhortation to live according to the spirit and to flee the life of the flesh from which the baptized have been “washed, sanctified, justified” (I Cor. 6:11). As in Johannine pneumatology, in St. Paul the spirit is in intimate relation with life; it is a source of life; “we must not live according to the flesh; for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Rom. 8:12-13). The vitality of the spirit will be communicated in the final resurrection even to the bodies of the faithful (I Cor. 15:44), who are with Christ one body and one spirit (Eph. 4:4).
Men are therefore divided into two categories: the carnal and the spiritual. “Those who live according to the flesh (κατὰ σάρκα) set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the spirit (κατὰ πνεῦμα) set their minds on the things of the spirit; the impulse of the flesh is death, whereas the impulse of the spirit is life and peace” (Rom. 8:5-6). The irreconcilable antagonism between flesh and spirit is also described by Gal. 5:16-17 (“the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh”); 6:8. With flesh are connected the Mosaic law with the “letter that kills” (II Cor. 3:6), Judaism and its external circumcision (Rom. 2:29; Gal. 4:29), sin, death; with the spirit, faith in Christ, holiness, life. The spirit is consequently opposed to the natural life of the flesh, the ψυχή. St. Paul contrasts the “animal man” (ψυχικός) to the “spiritual man” (πνευματικός); the former follows “the wisdom of this age,” the latter “the hidden wisdom of God” (I Cor. 2:10-3:3).
The contrast between Judaism and Christianity is summarized in II Cor. 3:17: the Mosaic law (“letter”) is slavery leading to death, while Christianity is spirit, “that is, freedom (from the Mosaic veil) leading to life. Therefore, we must not regard anyone, not even Christ, from a merely human point of view” (II Cor. 5:16; J. Dupont [V. BIBLICA.], pp. 180-86). The antinomy “letter-spirit” (Rom. 2:27-29; 7:6; II Cor. 3:6, 7, 17) is transposed to worship “in spirit” opposed to the external Jewish cult (Jn. 4:24).
Among ancient Greek thinkers, especially the Stoics, the πνεῦμα (a warm, fiery breath) has four fundamental meanings: divine, psychic, divinatory, and dynamic.
a) It is the immanent divinity, identified with the soul of the world.
b) It is the vital principle of animals and the hegemonic faculty of the human soul (in Seneca, the *spiritus sacer* which designates the rational faculty, like the δαίμων of Posidonius, is considered a particle of the divine breath that traverses the cosmos).
c) It is the inspiration of prophets, connected by Chrysippus and Posidonius to the breath that emanates from the earth, according to Plutarch.
d) It is a divine force communicated to man to direct his life and enable him to perform actions surpassing his natural power. This last meaning rises in Wisdom and Philo to designate a transcendent reality, a divine gift, which in the revelation of the New Testament, especially in St. Paul, attains a participation in the divine life of the intellect and will.
Christianity, supported by Platonism as represented by Wisdom, Philo, Origen, and St. Augustine, was the principal factor in the evolution of ancient pneumatology toward a more purely spiritualistic sense, because it applied the term πνεῦμα to the transcendent divinity and to the immortal soul. H. Leisegang (*Pneuma Hagion*, Leipzig 1922, pp. 5, 32 ff.) is mistaken in asserting that the pneumatology of Luke and Paul is of Hellenistic origin, based chiefly on Philo’s *πνεῦμα προφητικόν* and Plutarch’s *πνεῦμα μαντικόν*. Unlike the Stoic and Neoplatonic conception, the New Testament πνεῦμα transcends the material world, indeed opposing it entirely, to express a previously unknown conceptual category: the supernatural in the moral transcendence of fallen nature.
Bibl. (of the last thirty years): W. Schauf, *Sarx. Der Begriff «Fleisch» beim Apostel Paulus unter besonderen Berücksichtigung seiner Erlösunglehre*, Munich 1924; F. Büchsel, *Der Geist Gottes im Neuen Testament*, Gütersloh 1926; H. von Baer, *Der*