The crux of my theology

[theatokos]

The Christian tradition has long struggled with keeping body and soul together and naming both good. The Church has long fought, not always successfully, against gnostic ideas that the body is false or bad, something to be spurned and separated from in the quest for the ultimate good in spirit. Many Christians even go down the path to keeping the flesh violently in check, an extreme form of discipline. But Genesis 1 repeatedly affirms two truths: that creation - physical and material, including human bodies - is good and that human beings are have the Divine breath of life within them. Whatever our faults, flaws or failures, these two truths remain constant. These two facts alone, if taken to heart, are radical, transformational and foundational underpinnings, profoundly effecting not just how we treat one another, but how we treat our environment and ourselves.

The Christian Church has long held that after death our bodies and souls will be reunited. While it is unclear (especially to me) exactly how this happens given the scientific reality that our bodies decompose and become part of the earth, therefore becoming part of the planet and future generations, this point of theology indicates a holistic view to the human person. We are not only our souls, neither are we only our bodies. Rather we are both, united in a complete complexity.

The Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions also speak of a concept called deification, a process in which we grow ever closer to, and more and more like, God. This process is begun at baptism, but does not end when we die. This is part of what is possible thanks to the Divine spark, the breath of life within us. Because at our core, our nature and purpose is union with the Divine.

Jumping forward to Jesus as God incarnate, he is the ultimate example of complete union between creation and divinity. While we may never be able to reach this perfection, his example and especially the example of his mother, Mary (Theotokos, the God-bearer), who in her own flesh bore the union of creation and divinity, reveals to us the dignity and possibility of our humanity. As Sarah Boss says, it reveals to us "creation's capacity for glorification."

We do not miraculously attain perfection but we can confidently claim our dignity and divinity and move toward this union with God. We are all gods. This theology that divinity and creation, body and soul, spirit and matter, are not separated is a powerful corrective to damaging modern ideas that we completely control matter and/or that we are slaves to the tyranny and totality of our flesh, and to weak theologies that ask us to renounce this creation in favor of the "spiritual" and to hope only in the life to come.

The more I study theologies of the Virgin Mary, the more I realize what the crux of my theology rests on.

Comments

[thekitchenvixen.livejournal.com]

To me a lot of this seems illogical. What seems more logical to me (Duh, as a Baha'i) is that the description of the afterlife that includes the physical body (such as the Bible's description) is not the most accurate representation of life after death. The reason why is because human beings have undoubtedly become more intellectually complex and have gained a greater capacity of understanding through out time. During the time after Jesus' death and when the Bible was written, human beings would not have been able to understand or accept a life "out-of-body".
Throughout God's manifestations, the description of life after death has become increasingly complex, and less dependent on physical identification. The next life will be a life that consists of components we can never imagine, and none of them physical components.

I guess its hard for me to even entertain the idea that something so trivial as our bodies, our physicality, will be necessary in the next life... where our mission to become one with God will eventually be fulfilled.

[gramina.livejournal.com]

Yes; like you, one of the things I *do* like about (actual) orthodoxy is that the world and the body are described as "very good;" that embodiment (incarnation) is central.

[thekitchenvixen.livejournal.com]

In reference to the body/soul connection:

I like to use the analogy of the baby in the womb. Right now you are carrying a little baby in your womb. The baby is developing eyes, ears, arms, legs, etc. These are all components that the baby NEEDS to survive when it is born. It has also developed inside of amniotic fluid, with a placenta to nourish it, and a cord to deliver those nutrients. When the baby is in the womb, its life is based on the womb, the placenta, and the umbilical cord. These are what the baby's existence relies on.
But when the baby is born, those things are no longer needed. In fact, the baby needs its eyes, ears, mouth, legs, etc. now that it has come into this world. These are all things the baby did not need to have to survive in the womb.
So now the baby is surviving using its physical self. But it is also developing in other ways it does not yet need. It develops a sense of love, a personality, emotions, and other things that it does not yet need to survive in its basic means. What we don't often realize is that love, friendship, personalities... these are our eyes and ears for when we are born into the next world. Since we will not have our bodies, the development of our soul in this world is extremely important for our survival in the next.

sorry for ranting and hijacking your post :/

[ewigweibliche.livejournal.com]

Holy discussions! Wow. This is so great. You all rule.

down at the bottom

[donkeyfly.livejournal.com]

i´ve begun to think about religion again. it´s been awhile, like, 6 or 7 years since i really took a good hard look at what i believe. which i´m not exactly doing right now, but i´m starting to dip my toes into the water again. i´m reading the new testament. back 6 or 7 years ago i read the old testament and decided there was no way that this book could have anything to do with how i believed the world worked. i´m only about halfway through mark, but i´m already feeling the same way about the new testament.

i seem to remember that a lot of the frustration and annoyance that i felt back when i read the old testament had to do with my body. i love my body, i love how it lets me live and experience the world, and for the most part i trust it. i trust in what i can experience with my body more than i trust in any idea of a spirit or consciousness outside of my body. i don´t know how it works or how anybody elses works or how we ended up here with plastic, and puppies, and art, and dinosaur bones, and computers, and all sorts of things. i can´t explain that. what i do know is that i´m here, and not for very long. and what i believe is that once i´m gone, that´s it for me. it´s a scary thought, because for me it´s a big vast empty black void of nothingness afterwards. and i don´t know what that means. for me or for anyone else.

i got that far about 6 years ago and decided that denying the faith that i was brought up with and the beliefs of my family was enough at that point. so now i´m starting to think about moving on, but i don´t know how to get past that big scary vacuum. i´m not sure i ever will.

but i know that i can´t be separated from my body. and maybe that´s where the vacuum comes in, because if i feel that i can´t be separated from my body, then there must be nothing for me after my body is done.

so what´s the point? i´m not sure. so basically i live the life i want, try to be as happy as possible, and try not to decrease the happiness of those around me. but is that enough?

whew. i should stop here, since this is a comment on your post and not my own personal blab journal.

i guess what i´m trying to say is: i find a lot of what your write about your beliefs and mary very interesting, familiar, and thought provoking. thanks for posting.