Talking about the Body, 3

Our difficulty with the body of Jesus--how he could have been both human and God--translated to the same issue for our own bodies: how we can have in us an eternal soul and yet live in a material realm. If the body misbehaves, then the soul is soiled. As children of the sexual act, we are inevitably defiled. We are born of women. In part, the problem of Jesus' body is solved by making Mary innocent of sexual defilement: she is perpetually virgin and is not impregnated by a human. Jesus is born free of sin: he has the same human body, which in itself is a source of sin, but he is sinless because of his origin in spirit not in flesh.

Our bodies encase our souls, which through Jesus the Christ may be released into eternal bliss--BUT, wonder of wonders, a bliss enjoyed nonetheless in a body. The resurrected Jesus is in a body too but now one that mirrors for us what we can become if we live in him and follow his way. Jesus was human but not sexual. (The Renaissance paintings that show witnesses pointing to the infant's genitals are not acknowledging his sexuality but his human[male]ness.) He is sinless in part because he does not act sexually. Like mother like son.

The early church endorsed this perspective in suggesting that the body was superfluous; the sooner we get out of it, the better. On his way to a welcome martyrdom, Ignatius writes: "Let me be fodder for wild beasts--that is how I can get to God. . . .I shall be a real disciple of Jesus Christ when the world sees my body no more. . . .It is a fine thing to cut oneself off from the lusts that are in the world, for 'every passion of the flesh wages war against the Spirit,' and 'neither fornicators nor the effeminate nor homosexuals will inherit the Kingdom of God.' . . . Therefore we should guard the flesh as God's temple. For just as you were called in the flesh, you will come in the flesh."

Note that homosexuals and the effeminate are equally damned for their fleshly acts along with fornicators of all sorts. They sin by their actions, by their behaviors, by their very embodiment. This perspective is relevant to the present dispute in the church over the role of gays. It is ok for someone to be gay so long as he/she does not engage in sex with others who are gay. The celibate gay is acceptible, just as the man who might want to engage in sex outside of marriage with a woman is acceptible so long as he doesn't act on his desire. A man who acts and looks effeminate is also violating the order of things and causes others to lose control.

The early church urged celibacy on everyone, male and female, married and unmarried, in order to purify the soul. Tertullian described the body as a "unified organism." As Peter Brown writes in his book, The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity, Tertullian's "insistence on the control of the body was so rigorous precisely because he believed that it was directly through the body and its sensations that the soul was tuned to the high pitch required for it to vibrate to the Spirit of God. The soul was a subtle, invisible, but concrete 'body,' 'set in the mould' of the outer body." Temptation in the form of woman was the biggest problem: baptism did nothing to alter the fact of woman's seductiveness. As with present-day Islam, women were to be veiled to reduce the danger of their inherent seductiveness. (Hence, the problem with male effeminacy.)

Christ, in fact, came to earth, according to Clement, "to deliver us from error and from this use of the generative organs. . . . They say that the Saviour himself said: 'I come to undo the works of women,' meaning by this 'female,' sexual desire, and by 'work,' birth and the corruption of death."

The virginal will have less trouble at the last days than the sexually active; those who have been active and then renounce sexual acts can also be saved. Their souls may be purified and worthy of the new body of the society of God.

In our religion, modern Christianity, we have taken this to mean that we shall have eternal life, meet our friends, look the way we now look, etc. We don't have to renounce sexual acts of pleasure (it was rare for early Christians to have sex for pleasure; sex was for procreation and it was therefore likely that a couple with three children may have had intercourse precisely three times), but we do have to be washed clean in baptism and repent of our sins, the fleshly acts, for the most part, that are deeply feared in the faith. (This is the essential difference between the conservative and the liberal churches, between a barrier to full membership rooted in repentence and purity and the open door of full inclusion--although the desire of a convicted pedophile to be a member of a congregation has troubled the faithful on both sides.)

Gays, of course, are in permanent danger because for them to repent requires complete renunciation (celibacy), as it did for heterosexuals in the early church. The "conservatives" of today--Martin Minns and Peter Akinola, for example--partake of that early mentality that demands renunciation of the flesh as a matter of sexual purity and practice, except in the performance of one's duty as a married man and woman. The acts of the flesh, all of them, endanger the immortal soul. And only a man ordained according to the Catholic faith can protect us. (The necessity that the priest/bishop be pure is, of course, an ancient heresy.)

To return for a moment to Ignatius: "The soul dwells in the body, but does not belong to the body, and Christians dwell in the world, but do not belong to the world. . . . The flesh hates the soul and treats it as an enemy, even though it has suffered no wrong, because it is prevented from enjoying its pleasures; so too the world hates Christians, even though it suffers no wrong as their hands, because they range themselves against its pleasures. . . . The soul, which is immortal, is housed in a mortal dwelling; while Christians are settled among corruptible things, to wait for the incorruptibility that will be theirs in heaven."

Next time, I will talk about Augustine, as one must in thinking about this subject. A look ahead: Augustine writes in Book 6 of the Confessions: "I was bound by this need of the flesh, and dragged with me the chain of its poisonous delight, fearing to be set free."