The soul, being created rational and understandable by the life-giving breath of God, was not created at once with irrational anger and lust, but with the power of desire and, along with that, with the force of love.

Neither was the body created, from the beginning, with irrational anger and lust. For man received those qualities afterward, through disobedience, and became mortal, corrupt, and greedy.

For the body, say the saints of God, has been built incorrupt, as it will resurrect, though it is capable of receiving corruption. Also, the soul was likewise made incorruptible.

But the two of them, body and soul, became broken and became entangled, following the natural law of the movement of one towards another (perihorehesis), and the sharing of each other.

The soul has become soaked with passions, and the body has become like the ungodly beasts, through the work and mastery of corruption. The powers of both becoming one made man become through anger and lust, an irrational and mindless animal. And so it became like the beasts that perish.

Based on Saint Gregory the Sinaite

In the photo the ruins of a cell near the Vatopedi monastery, Mount Athos

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