Soul and Body According to “De Fide Orthodoxa” of St. John Damascene

Abstract

The Christian and particularly the Orthodox understanding of belief sometimes might be seen as a matter of the soul and not a matter of the body. Based on such an understanding the binomial “creditions – neuronal processes” would not have any significance for an Orthodox anthropology. But such an understanding can be marked as reductionist regarding the broader conceptions that we can find in the positions of the Fathers. In this contribution, some aspects of the comprehensive anthropological understanding of humans and their relation to God will be presented as it is conceived in the famous synthesis of patristic thought, De Fide Orthodoxa, written by St. John Damascene (~ 650–before 755).