When God created us He “breathed into [our] nostrils the breath of life; and [we] became living beings.” (Gen. 2.7) This breath of life the Holy Fathers figure as the “image of God” in man, his soul, and the freedom, reason and love which are properties of the soul. This breath or image of God, the soul, also is immortal, because it comes from the immortal God and shares in His grace or energy. So we do not belong to ourselves alone. We are made in grace, and without God’s divine energy in us we are not men and women. That is why the definition of life defined in a legal way by the courts in Terri’s case cannot be our definition. No human institution or individual human analysis can define what life is or assign a proper value and quality to it. Only God who made us can evaluate the life He gave us. I believe, as well intentioned as Terri’s judges and caretakers may have been, that they were taking on a role only God can fill. Whatever evidence against life may have appeared on Cat-scans and Ultra-sounds and even MRIs, there was evidence of other kinds that Terri’s parents recognized and that her relatives and friends found. And, perhaps, even though that evidence was personal and subjective, it might have been more direct and secure, more like a sign of God that she was still with us. “Love has a reason which reason cannot know,” said Pascal, the French mathematician and spiritual writer. I find it rather amazing that after all the scientific evaluation against life was in that Terri lived without food and water, in her weakened state, for two weeks. They debate whether she met certain arbitrary standards of self-awareness, but those two weeks of suffering show a self-will to live, don’t they?

For the Orthodox mind of the Fathers, each human life is very broad. It stretches from creation into eternity. We have always existed for God, in the counsels of the Holy Trinity we were loved in the mystery of our person before we began to live for ourselves in history. We are alive in our mother’s womb, in the safety of that private world; we are alive in this world for ourselves; and we are alive in the eternity of God. We are always in the hands of God: “Upon thee I have leaned from my birth; thou art he who took me from my mother’s womb.” (Ps. 71.6)

It is only in the last two hundred years that people have thought that the mind is only an organ of the senses, that it functions only as a physical organ which processes information that comes to it from the senses. For the rest of human history, scientific knowledge was only one part of the greater wisdom of God. St. Augustine wonderfully summarized what knowledge was, taking into consideration all the pagan reflection of the past and giving it a Christian context for us. He said the mind of man is made of two parts: “ratio superior” or superior knowledge; and “ratio inferior” or lower knowledge. This lower knowledge he called “science”. The higher knowledge he called wisdom or spiritual intuition and contemplation or a vision of truth, a vision of God.

I believe this superior knowledge of divine truth and reality is completely ignored by the legal definition of life or the scientific analysis of life. The Terri Schiavo case is a perfect illustration of the total rejection of this high knowledge or wisdom of the spirit from the Holy Spirit. But it was precisely this spirit which the family of Terri tried to convey to the courts and to the medical authorities who kept evaluating her life within the narrow borders of “lower knowledge.” But as St. Paul has said: “The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”(1 Cor. 2.14)

There is much more to say about the definition of life from the point of view of the Church, but we have outlined the basics of it. Now let us look at life from the perspective of the Resurrection of Christ.

St. Paul said that: “For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” (1 Cor. 15. 21-22) Since Christ rose from the dead, the definition of life has been radically changed. Earthly life is but a small slice of life - certainly not the spice of life, which only awaits us in eternity with Christ. From our baptism on we have been born into the eternity of life in Christ. We are already dead to this world in a profound sense. We are to mature beyond the “lower knowledge” of mere science. “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God.”(Col. 3.2-3) Our baptism is our personal Easter or Pascha! “We live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.” (Rom. 14.8-9)

They should have let go of their scientific definitions and legal decisions - and let God take care of the Terri He loves. They should have given her bread and water. They should have left her in the embrace of her parents who bore her and of the God who has borne her from the security of her mother’s womb to the vibrant life of her youth to the struggles of her bodily condition to the gates of eternity.


For further information, you may contact Fr. Anthony at franthony@peoplepc.com.