The Biblical Man: From Bios to Zoë

The Greeks had two words for “life”: bios and zoë. Bios represents the biological and individual sense of life, the life that pulsates within any one organism. Zoë, on the other hand, is shared life, life that transcends the individual and allows participation in a broader, higher, and richer life. In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis remarks that mere bios is always tending to run down and decay. It needs incessant subsidies from nature in the form of air, water, and food, in order to continue. As bios and nothing more, man can never achieve his destiny. Zoë, he goes on to...