The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

4. The soul and body are personally united, so that our perceptions
are composite, embracing the sensuous organ as modified by the nonego
in contact with it, and the mind as also modified in a manner which cannot
be explained. The nonego outside of the man is, however, on this theory,
still hypothetical.
For, first of all, it does not claim that we are conscious or perceptive
of what is outside of the individual, as a total complex of soul and body;
and, secondly, to reach the nonego which it claims to establish, it is
compelled to acknowledge that the ego is a personal unity--both soul and
body. The modified organ is, therefore, a part of the ego; and the theory
meets the horns of a dilemma. If it says the modification of the organ is
within the man, though outside of the mind, and, therefore, is perceived as
a nonego, it denies its own definition of the complex person on which the
theory rests--for the man is the ego. But if the total man be the ego, then
that which is within either part of his person is within the ego; and the
modifications of the man, be they where they may, are modifications of the
ego, and not objective realities existent beyond it. This last view
approximates the true view, which may be styled Personal Realism. It is in
substance a renewal of the first theory, but with the great improvement of a
true, yet still inadequate, view of the personality and unity of man. Personal
Realism regards man as a being of two natures, inseparably conjoined in
unity of person, so that he is not a soul and a body, but a psychical flesh, or
incarnate soul. Apart from the personal relation of these two parts, there
can be no man, no true human body, and no true human soul.
Between death and the resurrection there is only a relative, not an
absolute separation between soul and body; and the resurrection itself is a
proof that the two natures are essential to the perfect, distinctive, human
personality. A human spirit absolutely disembodied forever would not be a
man, but only the spirit of a man. At the resurrection, in consequence of
the changed condition of unchanged essences, man shall be a spiritual
body, or an incorporate spirit. Before the resurrection, as the dead live "to
God," both as to body and soul, both body and soul live to each other "to
God," and still constitute one