Body

The word 'spirituality' is often used in a relatively vague way to refer to the inner relationship between one's 'spirit' or 'soul' and God. There is a lurking influence of Neo-Platonism within Christian thinking that tends to assume that the material is bad and the spiritual good; that there is a gaping hole between our inner and our outer selves and that the proper location of devotion is our inner being. There is a further assumption that the soul/spirit is to be placed in the 'good' category while opposite it, in the 'bad' category, is the body/flesh. Paula Gooder explores what these six key concepts mean in the Bible, especially in the writings of Paul, before moving on to explore what Paul intended by the contrasts he drew, and what implications this all has for the way we think and speak about our spirituality today.