Category Archives: Image of God
Is Body Theology Foundational?
Is body theology foundational? Is this concept–the way I define and understand it–part of the rock bed of the Christian faith? If Christ is the cornerstone, then is Christ set in body theology?
As I began developing my concept of body theology a few years ago, I was presented with this question and began to ask myself just how much of the Christian faith is wrapped up in my definition of body theology. I came up with four categories: sexuality/physicality, community, media literacy, and service. The more I studied and explored the concept of body theology and the messages of our culture, the more convinced I became that we must first understand ourselves as physical/sexual/worthy beings before we can engage in healthy community, media literacy, and service because everything flows from the core issue of where our identity lies.
Our identity is the source from which we conceptualize everything we believe, from which we make choices to act or react, and through which we relate to God, ourselves, each other, and the world around us.
The issue of sexuality/physicality must be dealt with first because it is the biggest and deepest lie; it is the lens that must change first or it will color the way we understand all the other issues. While it is true that identity can only be discovered in community, in many cases unhealthy messages about our identity have already been internalized and are, thus, already being perpetuated in our communities. Before we can change the community identity, we have to exchange God’s truth for these lies about our bodies. Only then can we engage in community, culture, and service in a healthy way.
So, is body theology foundational? Christ of necessity must be set in body theology precisely because God entered the world in human form–as a body! Christ cannot be set solely in any theoretical or spiritual foundation because that negates the very meaning and purpose of the incarnation: God incarnate; God dwelling among us in the flesh!
This is the foundation of body theology: our bodies matter because God used BODY to create us, to relate to us, and to redeem us.
In this context we find our true identity in Christ. It is our human response to the incarnation of Christ to accept ourselves as the holistic bodyselves we were created to be. Only then, through this identity in Christ, can we begin to develop a healthy theology of bodily sexuality, bodily community, bodily cultural discernment, and bodily service.
Call of the Artist (concluded)
What follows is the conclusion of Part 2 that I posted an excerpt from in my previous post.
Art has a prophetic role in the Church today.[1]We must regain what we have lost—that understanding we used to have of the deep connection between artistic beauty and an experience of the holy.[2]What others can do with a paintbrush or a chisel, I can do with words.When I relate my own experiences, my own journey through uncovering lies to the healing truths that come with learning to relate to people in a way that does not exploit or ignore my “bodyself,”[3] I give voice to those around me who journey similarly—wading through lies, searching for truth.It feels very selfish to invite others to walk with me on a very personal journey that includes criticism of a tradition that I respect and love dearly, that has molded and shaped me into the kind of person I am, that has deeply embedded within me a profound sense of God’s goodness, grace, forgiveness, and mercy.But I believe that in my willingness to be thus publicly vulnerable, to open myself in that vulnerability to attack for my criticism, is a necessary part not only of the healing process but of the role of the artist—whether I am “really” an artist or not.
Art for art’s sake has its place.But there is need for artists to restore in the Church a sense of God’s holiness as expressed through beauty,[4] and beauty in the human form.[5]This is not to say that the artist has free reign to sensationalize, shock, or otherwise offend the Christian community carelessly in the name of the prophetic voice.[6]But gently, with kindness and genuine understanding, the more subtle artist is uniquely positioned to affect real change in the orientation of the spiritual life to the body, welcoming that necessary and undeniable part of ourselves into the conversation, into the experience of relating to one another and relating to God[7], and God incarnate[8]—as images of the beauty of God’s holiness.
[1] Indeed, “works of art can awaken faith, or at least the longing for faith” (Harries 132).
[2] “If a religious perspective on life is to carry conviction it has to account of the powerful spiritual impact which the arts, in all forms, have on people.Christianity needs to have a proper place both for the arts and for beauty” (Harries 2).
[3] Nelson uses this term frequently.
[4] Martin explains that if God is primary beauty and the created order is secondary beauty, then according to Jonathan Edwards’s theology of the body, it is “the work of grace that facilitates perception of that primary beauty that places the secondary beautyof the world in authentic perspective” (31).
[5] “Beauty defined in imagination,” notes Barger, is “truly transcendent of shifting cultural trends” (42).
[6] “True beauty,” Harries writes, “is inseparable from the quest for truth and those moral qualities which make for a true quest.In the world of art this means integrity” (62).
[7] Harries asserts, “The yearning aroused by experiences of beauty is a longing for God himself, for communion with his beauty” (94).Again, “we are invited to take the divine beauty into our very being through Eucharist” (98).Barger also notes this correlation, advocating that “ritual connects the body with spirituality” (183).
[8] Nelson writes, “In a culture that does not really honor matter but cheapens it, in a culture that does not love the body but uses it, belief in God’s incarnation is countercultural stuff” (195).
Call of the Artist
What follows is an excerpt from Part 2 of a paper I wrote in graduate school relating body theology to art and the Church. (Part 1 was an exploration of my personal journey in developing a body theology.)
There is profound beauty in the Incarnation of God in human form, a good human form that was just like every other image of God.[1]We have lost, I think, the ancients’ sense of beauty as that which is supremely Good,[2] as that which possesses a unique expression of truth in a way that draws us to look through it to that ultimate Beauty—the beauty of God.The Hebrew Bible draws a nuanced connection between beauty and holiness, preferring God’s glory as an expression of the beauty of holiness[3] rather than beauty for its own sake; yet its language and imagery is masterfully, powerfully creative—worthy of being deemed both good and beautiful for its ability to point beyond itself to the Goodness and Beauty of God.
Even our Newer Testament scriptures contain creativity in narrative and imagery, especially in the gospels and the Revelation of John.But as evangelicals we tend to narrow our focus to Paul’s letters which, though worthy of literary merit, were not designed or intended as artistic expressions of God’s truth.We focus on the divine and humiliated Jesus of the Philippians 2 hymn, on creedal statements, and on Paul’s contextual lists of do’s and don’ts for his churches.We have lost our emphasis on aesthetics for proper worship, as though God is better glorified by whining in a white-and-brown room than with the Sistine Chapel and Handel’s Messiah.We forget that our God is creative[4] and that God pronounced God’s creation good not because it is capable of standing alone but because it contains that element of truth[5] that points beyond itself to the goodness, beauty, truth, glory, holiness of our creative God.We forget, in our fear and shame, what we have been created for.
What I have discovered in particular, in my delving into the lies the Church perpetuated in my life concerning my own body and how to relate to other bodies is the connection, or perhaps more aptly the disconnection, between beauty expressed in art and the holiness of God expressed through Christian piety.We the-evangelical-community don’t know how to deal with our bodies.We don’t know what they’re for.We don’t understand physical beauty or its relation to any other kind of beauty.[6]We don’t know how to deal with our physicality, so we just label it sin to be safe.And anything in art that reminds us of our humanity or—dare I say it—Jesus’ humanity, is labeled just as sinful.[7]Consider the controversy in the Church when Caravaggio began depicting Jesus as ordinary and fleshly and real.We prefer the Gnostic or even Docetic Jesus,[8] the one who doesn’t disrupt our body-soul division or challenge us to live bodily into our role as the imago Dei.
(to be continued in the next post)
[1] Richard Harries argues that “spiritual beauty can also shine in a special way through human beauty and artistic creation.In the traditional Christmas story spiritual beauty and artistic beauty coalesce” (13). Likewise, “the glory of God shines out in the Cross and Resurrection” (55). Similarly, Lillian Barger notes that “the cross with its debasement and bloodiness is an unlikely location to find beauty”(172), yet it is the cross that “restores our imagination, destroyed by culture’s images” (173). Even James Alfred Martin agrees, for “the highest beauty is the unmerited redemptive work of God in history…beauty is something that happened” (10).
[2] Martin explains the Platonic belief that one ascends to the Good through an experience of Beauty” (15).
[3] “Biblical Israel,” Martin writes, “celebrated holiness over beauty—but not religion over aesthetics” (11).
[4] “Human beings” says Harries, “made in the image of God, share in divine creativity” (102).
[5] “Beauty,” Harries writes, “is the persuasive power of God’s truth and goodness” (11).
[6] But Harries argues that “the physical world, including our bodies, is created fundamentally good and beautiful” (37).
[7] Yet, as Barger argues, it is “the incarnation of God in Jesus [that] gives us a basis for including our bodies in the spiritual search” (161).
[8] James Nelson discusses the reentrance of Docetism in the contemporary church (51).
What is Body Theology?
Body theology is traditionally used to refer to body image and sexuality; however, I believe a true body theology is much more holistic, involving not only what we look like (physicality) but who we are as human beings (identity) and what we do with our bodies (community and service).
Holistic body theology is four-fold: sexuality/physicality, cultural discernment/media literacy, community, and service. Topics covered on this blog will stem from one of these categories, always with the underlying principle belief that our bodies were made good and, though corrupted by the fall, have been redeemed through Christ.
Holistic body theology, then, is based on the incarnation of Christ: God took on flesh, not merely the appearance of flesh; God lived and suffered and died—and rose again!—in the actual, fleshly sense. Likewise, we are both corporeal (bodily) and spiritual beings. My goal is to encourage Christians to realize our true identity in Christ, free ourselves from bondage to the lies that can be perpetuated through culture, and be empowered to enter into the redemption Christ offers both for our bodies and how we use them in the world. I believe that as we grow in knowledge and discernment, we can redeem both the way we see ourselves and the way we interact with culture–and enjoy living in freedom in the space where the sacred and secular blur into messy, surprising beauty.
Come join me on this journey toward healthy, holy living.
Holistic Body Theology 