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Frank Answers About the Body–God’s and Ours

Question: The body figures prominently in your recent writings. What is important to you as a liturgical theologian about the body?

Frank answers: The body is of utmost importance to Christian theology. First of all, God created us as bodies from the material of the earth (Genesis 2). We are not just spiritual beings. We are biological beings who must eat and sleep and procreate.

Adam and Eve by Albrecht Durer

We live bodily lives in the world and worship God with our bodies. St. Paul wrote, “I appeal to you…by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1). We have nothing else with which to worship and serve God than our bodily selves.

God relates to us body-to-body. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). This is the doctrine of the incarnation, the enfleshment or embodiment of the Son of God. St. Athanasius of Alexandria in Egypt wrote in his treatise On the Incarnation (ca. 320 AD), “If you want to know the mind of God, look to the body of Christ.” He pointed to what Christ did for us and for our salvation in his body: his birth, suffering, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. These are aspects of what Christ did “for us and for our salvation” that are listed in the ecumenical creeds of the Church. Athanasius became an arch-defender of the Nicene Creed. It is noteworthy that in each of these actions, Christ was naked! Most especially, Christ was naked on the cross for all the world to see. That’s how Romans crucified their victims, as Michael Scorsese portrayed in the film version of The Last Temptation of Christ, starring Willem Dafoe.

I would point out that in the debate over images (the iconoclastic controversy) in the eighth century, the Second Council of Nicea agreed that God the Father cannot be represented by the body (contrary to Michelangelo and other Western artists), but Christ can be represented bodily because of his human nature. The Council further decreed that an image of Christ and a cross should be displayed in every church or place of worship. In the Catholic and Lutheran church buildings these requirements were often combined with a crucifix above the altar.

In Christ, God has a body because the Word became flesh. Embodiment has been taken into God. So even in our relationship with our Trinitarian God we are talking about one body relating to other bodies—God’s body in Christ relating to our bodies. Christ is present spiritually “where two or three are gathered in my name” but he is present bodily in the sacraments when he binds himself to us by impacting our bodies. We are joined to the death and resurrection of Christ and receive the Holy Spirit through the sacrament of Baptism.

Eastern Orthodox Baptism

In Holy Communion we receive the body and blood of Christ into our bodies. The Eucharist as the real presence of Christ is simply incomprehensible without Christ’s ascension into heaven. The human nature of Christ is circumscribed by time and place. The historical Jesus could only be in one place at a time. But now in heaven, the human nature of Jesus shares the omnipresence of his divine nature. This is called the communicatio idiomata—“the sharing of attributes.” This is what makes possible the presence of Christ in the bread and wine on the earthly altar, according to Christ’s word “This [bread] is my body, this [wine in the cup] is my blood of the new covenant.” When medieval Christians referred to the Eucharist as “God’s body,” they were not wrong.

Administering Holy Communion at Hope Presbyterian Church

We disciples of Jesus are not left as orphans by Jesus’s ascension. He is present for us in the sacrament of his body and blood. But Jesus also promised that the Father would send the Holy Spirit in his name. This Spirit came upon the chosen apostles on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2), fifty days after the resurrection and ten days after the ascension in St. Luke’s chronology. That same Spirit is given to all who are baptized in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the person of God who is constantly in touch with us—in our bodies. We receive the gift of the Holy Spirit in Baptism and our bodies become temples of the Holy Spirit. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God?” (1 Corinthians 6:19). The Spirit within us animates us to “glorify God in our bodies.”

church choir puts their bodies into singing

This Spirit is “the Spirit of our Lord and of his resurrection,” as a communion prayer in Lutheran Book of Worship puts it. The Holy Spirit is not some entity separate from the Father and the Son. The Spirit is the wind, the life-given breath, of the risen and glorified Lord. The Holy Spirit will raise our mortal bodies in the resurrection of the dead on the last day by breathing life into them, just as the Lord God breathed the breath of life (ruach) into man in the beginning and Adam became a living being (nefesh chaim).

The Holy Spirit does not connect only with our minds or with the “spiritual life.” The Spirit is all about the body. If this has not been clear, it is because Christianity was influenced by Gnosticism with its devaluation of the material creation and the body, by Neo-Platonism with its body-soul dualism, and in recent centuries in the Western world by Rene Descartes’s dualism of mind and body (with a preference for the mind—“I think, therefore I am”).

But surely ordinary Christians have practiced the “body language” of an incarnational religion in their relationship with God. Life has been sanctified in fasting and feasting, work and rest, sexual intercourse in marriage and dying a good death. Body language extends as well to physical works of mercy: feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick, sheltering the homeless, rescuing the victims of disaster, providing relief and burying the dead. It involves being a member of the body of Christ in the world (the church community), and participating in the body of citizens who make up the civic community. Christian spirituality today also embraces the health and well-being of the earth on which we walk, whose water we drink, and whose air we breathe.

Mother Teresa’s Hospital in Calcutta, India

Precisely because by our bodies we serve God in worship, in ministry to the neighbor, and in the care of the earth, we have to keep our bodies healthy. Christian mission from the beginning has included the ministry of healing. Medical missions have been an indispensable part of Christian missionary activity. But individual Christians also have a personal stewardship responsibility to take care of their bodies by keeping them fit through proper diet, exercise, rest, medical attention when needed—precisely so we can use our bodies in worship, service, and stewardship. The Young Men’s Christian Association was founded by evangelical Christians and emphasizes the tri-unity of Body, Mind, and Spirit. YMCAs are noted for their gyms and swimming pools.

Example of a YMCA with an up-to-date gym with workout equipment

In the study of spirituality, we have rediscovered that the body is necessary in prayer and meditation. The body assumes a posture, whether that is standing, sitting, or kneeling. The senses may be employed in meditation; the focus becomes something to hear, see, touch, taste, or smell. We have seen the importance of relating our bodies to Earth’s body, from which we were created. In meditation or prayer the body may be present to the creation’s God without the covering imposed by society or culture.

The body is not just an important aspect of Christian theology; it is fundamental. In the incarnation we encounter God as a human body. Our response in worship, theology, mission, and spirituality are all about the body.

It goes without saying that our bodies are created by God good and true and beautiful. We have no need to be ashamed of them. Issues of modesty and covering the body are the consequence of sin. God was surprised that our first parents were hiding from him because they were naked and afraid. “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the fruit I commended you not to eat?” There’s nothing sinful about being naked before God. That was modeled by Jesus the Christ in his saving acts.

Pastor Frank Senn

“Adam and Eve” by Danish artist Harold Slott-Moller

Frank Senn

I’m a retired Lutheran pastor. I was in parish ministry for forty years and taught at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago for three years. I've been an adjunct professor at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, IL. Since my retirement in 2013 I've also taught courses at Trinity Theological College in Singapore, Satya Wacana Christian University in Salatiga, Central Java, Indonesia, and Carey Theological College in Vancouver. I have a Ph.D. in theology (liturgical studies) from the University of Notre Dame.