Bodies Between Heaven & Earth

Last updated on: October 13, 2017 at 6:25 am by Matthew Tan

Bodies Between Heaven & Earth 2017-10-13T06:25:59+10:00 Matthew Tan

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Source: pixabay.com

I have just started trawling through some old essays for tips for a potential project on faith and embodiment. One theme that is constantly jumping out is the body operating as a kind of doorway, the tactile yet liminal border between the physical and the metaphysical, the temporal and the eternal (I have written on the subject of liminality here).

In art and philosophy, the body continues to be a constant theme of interest, not in and of itself, but as a reference point for the exploration of the things eternal. Leonardo Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man and Salvador Dali’s Corpus Hypercubus are just a couple of artistic examples in which the movement is made from the nobbly, fleshly world of corporeality, to the conceptual purity – an eternality for the Greeks – of geometry and mathematics.

Meanwhile in the world of philosophy, we have Emmanuel Mounier’s passage from his 1950 essay Personalism, in which he establishes the vital link between the universal of being on the one hand and the particularity of his body on the other. Furthermore, Mounier gives us this striking line

By the solicitation of the [body’s] senses it pushes me out into space, by growing old it acquaints me with duration and by its death it confronts me with eternity.

In a similar vein, Graham Ward alerts us in his Christ and Culture to the distinction between two German conceptions of the body. On the one hand, there is Körper to denote the biological reality of the body, a body that merely exists; on the other hand, there is Leib, which denotes not only a biological body, but one where the soul is intermingled with flesh and bone, a body that truly lives. The living of the biological body, therefore, pulls into the muscle and sinew the eternal realm where the soul is located.

From the standpoint of art, philosophy and theology, the body comes to us as an opening reality, where the body is a doorway that points us to eternal things. Yet at the same time, we see in the world of policy and commerce attempts to treat the body like an enclosed entity – what Ward calls “the body as mere flesh” – an entity that can be measured, controlled, managed, transported, bought and sold.

This post will act more as a deposit of resources for further development at a later stage. Watch this space.

theological anthropology

Uncategorized

Previous Post

October 6, 2017

Nostalgia, Reality & the Voice of God

Next Post

October 20, 2017 The Heft of Heaven

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category architecture art Augustine Belloc Benedict XVI bible blogs books bourgeois Christianity Campion College Chesterton Christianisation Church and Culture Church Fathers citizen conference conservative consumer culture cybernetics Desert Fathers discipleship distributism drinking ecclesiology economics education environment Evagrius of Pontus formation Foucault George Weigel Girard Graham Ward http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post interfaith Jacques Ellul John Chrysostom Julia Kristeva Latin liturgy mall marriage monasticism Music Narrative news philosophy polis politics pop culture postmodern city postsecular prayer prostestant quote Quotes Radical Orthodoxy resources Rome Rule of St. Benedict saint Saints secular sociology theological anthropology theology transcendance Uncategorized videos William Cavanaugh

Select a Month December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 October 2009 February 2008 December 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

We were commanded to send away our foreign wives and children to remain faithful to God. Who are we?

Select your answer to see how you score.

The standing army The returning exiles The Levites The Priests