Short Statement
Christ, being truly God and truly man, fully assumed our humanity — not as a spirit merely inhabiting a body, but as the eternal Word truly becoming flesh, taking on a complete human nature of body and rational soul together. In doing so, He sanctifies embodied life and reveals it as integral to God's good design. Because Christ assumed the fullness of our humanity, the fullness of our humanity may be healed and redeemed. The body is therefore not dispensable to salvation, and we live in hope of the resurrection of the body.
Christ alone pre-existed in His divine nature as the eternal Son. We, by contrast, are created within history as embodied selves from conception, with God's intentional forming and personal knowledge of us from our very beginning as a unified reality of body and soul. This understanding shapes how we honour the goodness and sanctity of embodied human life.
Detailed Explanation
On the Incarnation and the dignity of embodied life
We believe that Jesus Christ freely assumed our humanity — not as a spirit merely entering a body, but as the eternal Word truly becoming flesh (John 1:14). In Him "the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily" (Colossians 2:9), and He partook fully of our human condition, "sharing in flesh and blood" (Hebrews 2:14), being "made like His brothers in every respect" (Hebrews 2:17), and coming "in the likeness of sinful flesh" (Romans 8:3), yet without sin. That Christ is "truly God and truly man" is the shared confession of the whole Church. It was given its classic definition at the Council of Chalcedon (451 AD), received by the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant traditions, and is confessed in the same substance by the Oriental Orthodox churches in the Cyrilline (Miaphysite) language of St Cyril of Alexandria.
Critically, the Church has always understood that Christ assumed not only a human body but a complete human nature — body and rational soul together — because it is the complete human nature that stands in need of healing and redemption. As Gregory of Nazianzus articulated in his letter against Apollinaris: "What is not assumed is not healed; what is united to God is saved" (Epistle 101 to Cledonius). This principle guards against any suggestion that only part of our humanity — body without soul, or soul without body — is the locus of salvation.
In the Incarnation, Christ sanctifies embodied human life, revealing that the body is not incidental to who we are but integral to God's good design. Scripture teaches that God formed us with intention and care, so that we may say, "You formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb… I am fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalm 139:13–14). The Son assumed the whole of our humanity so that the whole of our humanity might be healed and saved. Therefore we honour the goodness of embodied life, knowing that God's redeeming purpose encompasses the body — for "the flesh is the very condition on which salvation hinges" (Tertullian, On the Resurrection of the Flesh, c. 208 AD — paraphrase of De Resurr. 8).
On the resurrection of the body
We live in hope of the resurrection, because Christ is raised bodily as "the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep" (1 Corinthians 15:20), and we await the day when "this mortal body must put on immortality" (1 Corinthians 15:53), when our lowly bodies will be transformed "to be like his glorious body" (Philippians 3:21). Body and soul belong together, ordered toward communion with God and destined for resurrection. The hope of the gospel is not escape from the body into a purely spiritual existence, but the redemption and glorification of the whole person — body and soul together — in the new creation.
On Christ's pre-existence and human creation
We affirm that Christ alone, as the eternal Son, pre-existed in His divine nature and freely assumed a complete human nature within history. He is the One who can truly say, "Before Abraham was, I am" (John 8:58), the One who was "with God" and "was God" before all things (John 1:1–3). This pre-existence is unique to the eternal Son; it cannot be extended to human beings as such.
Created human beings do not exist before our embodied life as disembodied selves. We are not "born into" bodies as though we previously existed apart from them. We are created by God within history as embodied selves, from our very beginning. Scripture speaks of God's personal knowledge and purposeful forming of human life before birth: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you" (Jeremiah 1:5), and "Did not he who made me in the womb make him? And did not one fashion us in the womb?" (Job 31:15). God's knowledge of us is not knowledge of a pre-existent soul; it is the intimate, creative knowledge of the One who forms us into being. "In him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28) — our existence is entirely received, entirely gift.
On body and soul as a unified whole
Accordingly, and as taught in the historic and enduring tradition of the Church, we confess that God creates us as integrated and congruent selves — not as pre-existent spirits later assigned to bodies, but as one unified reality, called into being as embodied persons, fashioned without mistake, and given our life as a gift (cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q.90, a.4; Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man; Augustine, On the Soul and Its Origin; and the broad patristic rejection of Origenist pre-existence of souls, given conciliar expression at Constantinople II in 553 AD).
When Scripture speaks of "spirit, soul, and body" together (1 Thessalonians 5:23), it is not mapping three separate compartments but invoking the wholeness of the human person before God — the complete human being in every dimension, offered entirely to Him. Whatever the precise anthropological terminology used across different Christian traditions, the broad consensus of historic Christianity is clear: human beings are not souls trapped in bodies, nor bodies incidentally animated by souls. We are embodied persons — the body is integral to personal identity, not a dispensable shell.
Theological Notes
These notes are provided for theological clarity. They are not additional membership requirements but explain the reasoning behind particular formulations.
On "body and soul" vs "spirit, soul, and body": Different Christian traditions use different anthropological vocabularies. Some speak of a dichotomy (body and soul), others of a trichotomy (body, soul, and spirit). The Statement is deliberately framed in terms of the unity of the whole person rather than prescribing a particular anatomy of the soul. Both dichotomous and trichotomous traditions agree that the human person is a unified whole and that the body is intrinsic to that whole — which is all this Statement requires.
On Gregory of Nazianzus and Chalcedon: Gregory's "what is not assumed is not healed" is among the most widely received formulations in Christian history, honoured across every tradition: Catholic, Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, Reformed, and evangelical. The Chalcedonian definition (451 AD) is received by the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant traditions; the Oriental Orthodox confess the same one Christ, fully God and fully man, in Cyrilline (Miaphysite) terms rather than the "two natures" formula. We cite "truly God and truly man" as the confession all hold in common, not as a requirement to accept Chalcedon's particular formula.
On the rejection of Origenist pre-existence: The rejection of the pre-existence of souls is the broad consensus of the patristic tradition (Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, and others), given conciliar expression at Constantinople II (553 AD). We cite it as this shared patristic consensus rather than as a council binding on all: the Oriental Orthodox, who do not receive the post-Chalcedonian councils, reject Origenism on their own patristic grounds, and the Protestant traditions, which vary in how formally they receive the later councils, hold the same conviction that the soul is not pre-existent.