All sacred Scripture can be divided in to flesh and spirit as if it were a spiritual man. For the literal sense of Scripture is flesh and its inner meaning is soul or spirit. Clearly someone wise abandons what is corruptible and unites his whole being to what is incorruptible. (Maximos the Confessor)

I like this distinction for Scripture as consisting of both the flesh and spirit. It strikes me as a real - and helpful - insight.

In a later saying, Maximos identifies the law with flesh and the prophets with spirit. Once again this strikes me as helpful.

But I am not yet persuaded of the need to abandon the flesh. My reading of the prophets - and especially of Jesus - is that they sought to infuse the flesh with the spiritual.

The material world is also the creation of God... and it is good. The prophets call us to recognize and retrieve the spiritual origins and purposes of the material.

We seek to unite inner meaning and outer appearance.