The church seems to get screwed up about the body-spirit opposition constantly, in spite of the fact that it actually knows this is rubbish when it's forced to stop and think about it. And I don't know why this keeps happening.† Possibly it's just that to a certain kind of personality type, the idea that the flaw in human nature, or sin, or whatever you want to call it, is located in the body (whereas the mind and the will are fine, as long as they dominate the body's urges) is less threatening than the idea that the crack runs right through, and that actually whatever the weaknesses of the body, they're much less nasty than the more spiritual sins, such as pride.
Presenting morality as a list of don'ts is damaging in all sorts of ways; but it's also lousy theology.
... I'll get back to you on the questions - now I have to run and do some photocopying before my seminar.
† Some of it's S Paul's fault, because he was ill-advised enough to talk about the 'flesh' as a problem. I am fairly sure that by that he actually meant 'human nature as opposed to divine grace' rather than 'body bad, spirit good', but it's a deeply misleading term. And, of course, there's a lot of cross-contamination from later Greek thought, where - while they didn't have the same interest in sin - they did think of the body as subordinate to the spirit, and the journey to God (or the One) in terms of transcending the flesh, and when that gets combined with the Christian idea of sin as the barrier to God, it's liable to produce a weird hybrid which locates sinfulness in the flesh. Dangerous, and as I say, lousy theology - but it seems to have a horrible power of compulsion.
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regna
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Date: 2008-10-15 09:43 am (UTC)Presenting morality as a list of don'ts is damaging in all sorts of ways; but it's also lousy theology.
... I'll get back to you on the questions - now I have to run and do some photocopying before my seminar.
† Some of it's S Paul's fault, because he was ill-advised enough to talk about the 'flesh' as a problem. I am fairly sure that by that he actually meant 'human nature as opposed to divine grace' rather than 'body bad, spirit good', but it's a deeply misleading term. And, of course, there's a lot of cross-contamination from later Greek thought, where - while they didn't have the same interest in sin - they did think of the body as subordinate to the spirit, and the journey to God (or the One) in terms of transcending the flesh, and when that gets combined with the Christian idea of sin as the barrier to God, it's liable to produce a weird hybrid which locates sinfulness in the flesh. Dangerous, and as I say, lousy theology - but it seems to have a horrible power of compulsion.