Editorial

Although this issue of Theology does not take embodiment as a deliberate thematic focus, each of the articles does relate to how our being embodied, fleshly and physically localized beings is involved in theology: in Christology, in metaphysics, in art, in spirituality and in cultural encounter.

It has been the consensus of the last several theological generations that embodiment is – to put it very, very crudely – a ‘good thing’, and the theology of previous epochs is either criticized for having failed to recognize this or is shown to have been more pro-body, more incarnational, than previously thought. Much of this transvaluation has focused on issues of sexuality and gender, with feminist theology playing a particularly important role in rehabilitating women’s embodied experience as a proper and even exemplary point of reference in theological reflection.

It remains a moot point, however, as to whether theology is playing catch-up in this epochal change or whether it is rediscovering its own authentic voice. That is to say, is this re-evaluation of the body something that has come about due to the influence of the anti-Platonic revolution in philosophy (Nietzsche), science’s ever more complete and therefore ever more persuasive account of human beings as biological beings (Darwin), recognition that the satisfaction of material needs is integral to social justice (Marx), or a series of cultural movements that have prioritized the body and its experiences, from romanticism through to wellness culture? Or was it all along Christianity’s insistence on God as incarnate that, via a winding, complex and conflicted history, prepared the way for the modern world’s materialism?

Either way, it is worth remembering that older, more ascetically inclined cultures, Christian and non-Christian, recognized that the body is not solely the source of positive life experiences. It was not only enslaved peoples who experienced their bodies as ‘all aching and racked with pain’, but this has been in varying degrees a constant human experience. Today, we have tended to think that our quality of embodied life is one of those things that is naturally and constantly improving, but this is not clearly the case: recent statistics suggest that people in Britain are now living a greater part of their lives in poor health than they did some years ago. As is easily guessed, this varies according to socio-economic factors, with the poor suffering the worst deterioration. The more precise reasons for this are debatable, but being in my eighth decade, I, like anyone in my cohort, know that the body brings misery as well as joy. The affirmation of embodiment has to embrace affirmation of the suffering that goes with it, which isn’t so easy.

Christianity was right to reject Manicheanism, although the methods it was to use against the Manicheanism of the Cathars are a matter for repentance. Weirdly, analogous beliefs have started to appear at the heart of the hi-tech community, where tech billionaires, sometimes with the support of reputable scientists, not only speculate about the possibility of indefinite human life extension but, in some cases, are experimenting on their own bodies. Others believe that human consciousness can be uploaded onto the supercomputer that is to come, which, combined with interplanetary exploration, opens a way (they think) to make human consciousness an everlasting feature of the universe.

As one goes further into the arguments put forward in favour of such visions of the post-human future, many have to do with revulsion against the suffering involved in bodily existence as we know it. These extend to arguments that, on current trends, humanity as a whole will be destroyed by existential shocks it is not able to defend against, unless we change the nature of humanity. That is to say, the transhumanist vision is, at its heart, a flight from reality. By way of contrast, a Christian affirmation of the body, inclusive of the affirmation of its suffering, accepts this finite planet as our birthplace and our home and, just as being embodied entails undergoing physical deterioration and ultimately death, accepts that human consciousness may not, in the end, be a permanent feature of the physical universe. Just as my life will come to an end, the life of Earth will come to an end, and we human beings will come to an end with it.

But what about eternal life? What about resurrection? What, on such a view, is left to hope for?

These are big questions for a simple editorial and I must leave them hanging. Here, I would say only that acceptance of the finitude – in space and time – of our embodied existence is not the denial of eternal life or of resurrection: it is simply a statement of the condition under which we are to discover what, in all seriousness, Christian hope can mean.

Returning to the articles collected here, Charles Pickstone seeks to ground a theology of art in a Trinitarian experience that, as he insists, is fully enfleshed. Richard Lindley argues for the full humanity of Jesus attested to in the Gospels and rejects the ‘supernatural additives’ that have often been subsequently superimposed on the gospel picture. Robby Igusti Chandra and Victor Christianto explain how Semar, one of the central figures in native Javanese puppetry, performs an incarnational movement that provides a cultural point of contact for a kenotic Christology. Chris Hall explores how the material location of our lives offers possibilities for glimpses of the divine, while Michael Keeling examines how our participation in cosmic life can reveal divinity to us in a fully humanized way. Finally, Michael Hopkins explores how crime fiction opens up the moral complexity of the human condition in ways that resonate with what happens in pastoral ministry. None of these one-line summaries does justice to the articles themselves, and I hope that readers will enjoy them and find as much stimulus to reflection in them as I have.