Christian Anthropology, Kenosis, and Being

Israel Centeno

Christian Anthropology, Kenosis, and Being

Christian faith does not begin with a dualistic conception of the human being. St. Paul does not speak of the soul as a separable entity from the body, nor of a “spirit” that can exist apart from the concrete, embodied reality of the person. For him, as for the entire biblical tradition, the human being is a substantial unity: body and soul form a single person, a living totality that partakes in time but is destined for eternity.

When St. Paul exclaims, “O death, where is your sting?” (1 Cor 15:55), he is not imagining a dissolution of the self, nor a spiritual fusion with divinity in gnostic terms. On the contrary, he proclaims the victory of being over corruption. The Christian will never become a ghost or a spark of consciousness floating in the ether: he will be fully himself, with a glorified body, transformed not by negation of the current body, but by its transfiguration.

In this sense, death does not interrupt being. The experience of those who have been clinically dead and report lucid awareness—even “out-of-body”—does not indicate a physical journey elsewhere, but an ontological continuity: being is not interrupted. Where the “I” remains, the person remains, even if the physical body has ceased to respond. If God chooses to return vitality to the biological body, it will be reanimated; if not, the passage continues toward the promised glorified body.

This calls for a non-dualistic Christian anthropology. The human being is not a sum of parts, nor a soul trapped in flesh. He is a whole directed toward communion, called to fullness. That is why St. Paul does not speak of “liberation from the body” but of its redemption: “We wait eagerly for the redemption of our bodies” (Rom 8:23). The body is not something to escape, but something to be transformed by grace.

This also frames suffering in a unified way. Suffering is not merely a punishment or a test to earn merit. It is a reality that, once shared by Christ, acquires a radically new meaning. “I bear on my body the marks of Jesus” (Gal 6:17), says Paul. The wounded, crucified flesh becomes testimony of communion.

Here the Pauline kenosis is revealed: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20). Dying to oneself is not disappearance, but allowing the self to be transformed by love. Taking up the cross, giving everything, is not self-annihilation—it is the purest affirmation of being.

Christian detachment is not an escape from the body or the world. It is the awareness that being is not exhausted in what is visible. “Let the dead bury their own dead” (Luke 9:60) is not contempt for earthly life, but a call to a fuller, more real, more truthful life.

To die to oneself is to stop living as though one were the measure of all things. It is to empty oneself of pride, possession, and control. It is to make room for another to dwell within us: Christ, the incarnate Word, who in his own kenosis assumed our flesh so that ours might be glorified.

This Christian anthropology—embodied and eschatological—is not abstract. It has consequences for every aspect of life: suffering is not absurd, the body is not disposable, history is not an illusion. Every moment is part of a larger drama in which being stakes its eternity.

Therefore, to die is not to cease to be. To die is to be handed over, transfigured, upheld by the promise of a resurrection in which the whole self—body and soul—will be fully itself in God. A continuity without rupture.

For in Christ, being is not lost: it is fulfilled.