More of C. S. Lewis’s Greatest Heresies, or How to Not Hate Your Body

Some days I find myself in euphoric rapture about the miracle of my physical being and in profound gratitude that there are theological traditions that affirm the body as an essential component of human selfhood, and then I’ll see C. S. Lewis quoted, “You don’t have a soul; you are a soul. You have a body.”

Sigh.

Don’t throw your pipes away just yet, 20-something Christian guys. Mr. Lewis never actually said this. It was in fact his predecessor in the realm of theological fiction, George MacDonald who penned the slogan. Though attributed to the wrong man, the statement holds true as a typical attitude about the soul and body within modern Christianity.

As a disclaimer, I would not consider myself a proper "Christian", but I am fascinated to the point of reverence by the incarnation of Christ. Welcome to Fratres Dei, where we electric slide through the sultry cavern between belief and unbelief. Strap in.

Let’s back up. All the way up.

The author of Genesis 2:7 tells the story of the creation of the human person, writing, “Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”

Within ancient Hebrew writings there is no definite distinction between the body and soul—only “living beings.” The Hebrew word for "living being" is nephesh (נֶ֫פֶשׁ). Nephesh is also translated as “soul,” “life,” “self” “person,” “desire,” appetite,” “emotion,” or “passion.” According to Jewish tradition, the nephesh is the totality of the human being. It is not the spiritual essence or the "truer" expression of the human person; it is the entirety of the person—physical and spiritual. We see this in the creation narrative as the human person does not simply receive a nephesh, but becomes a nephesh.

So what does this mean for the theologian? This understanding of the human person calls her to a complete embrace of the body as the realization of the self. This means that they can revere and enjoy the sacred with the entirety of their being–their lungs, arms, teeth, feet, skin, ovaries, bellybuttons, and rectums. They can relish in their physical existence as they dance, eat, have sex, run, sleep, breathe, and build. Within their spirituality they are free to not simply occasionally acknowledge the body or seek to do spiritual practices in spite of the body, but they may instead uphold the body as the integral substance of their spiritual personhood. With all due respect, Mr. MacDonald, I am a body.

Be a body, too. Check out Fratres Dei's Somatic Spiritual Advising and Ecstatic Dance.

Sources:

1. W. H. F. A. “Be Not Entangled Again in a Yoke of Bondage.” The British Friend 1, no. 1 (January 1, 1892): 157.

2. Francis Brown, D.D., D.Litt., Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), 659.

3. Thomas Ryan, Reclaiming the Body in Christian Spirituality (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2004), 82.

April 23, 2018 | Denver, Colorado

#bodytheology #theology #spiritual direction #spiritual advice