Why Matter Matters

Jesus showed the apostles real hands and a real side. He really ate with his disciples; he really walked with Cleopas; he really conversed with people, using a real tongue. Jesus really reclined at supper, and with real hands he took bread, blessed and broke it, and offered it to them…Don’t let yourselves be deceived into thinking that Jesus ate with out teeth, walked without feet, broke bread without hands, spoke without a tongue, or showed a side that had no ribs.

—Saint Jerome

The Christian story, from the beginning of the narrative in Genesis to its dramatic climax in Revelation, is an earthy story, a fleshy story that celebrates materiality, laments its perversion by human sin, and eagerly awaits its ultimate glorification in the resurrection life. Creation may not be exhausted by material creation (angels are created and they're not material), but it is the material world whose creation is chronicled in the opening pages of Genesis and whose tale of glory and disgrace, near total collapse and full restoration is told throughout the bible.

The story of creation, by the way, is not merely a story of Divine production or origination either. It is a story of Divine delight, delight in the material world brought into being by the Word. Indeed the creational refrain “It is good!” echoes through the pages of Genesis and beyond.

The doctrine of the incarnation, the taking on of flesh by the second person of the Trinity, signals God’s re-affirmation of embodiment and creation. So too the Ascension. The incarnation of the second person of the Trinity, his taking on of flesh, was neither momentary nor provisional. God’s persistent “Yes!” to embodiment reverberates into eternity in the resurrection, exaltation, and glorification of the embodied Christ. The humanity of Christ, his embodied nature, is not shed in the New Jerusalem. It is taken up, exalted and glorified.

Remember too that the most prominent image used in Scripture for what awaits us in the hereafter is that of a great banquet, nothing short of a Eucharistic feast of carnal delight. And not a whiff of disembodied or ghostly existence is to be found anywhere in that image.

If you want to know what it means to be human, what it means to live a full-orbed and flourishing human life, look to the embodied Christ. What you will discover there is exactly what sober-minded theologians have been telling us all along: that an authentic human existence consists in a fully embodied life rightly lived in relation to God, to neighbor, and to the rest of the terrestrial world.

Now I’m on record as saying that we human beings are wholly material beings, lacking immaterial parts such as an immaterial soul. And I believe that a world-affirming, material-affirming view of our nature has concrete, practical implications. For example, a recognition of the fact that God’s kingdom has come to us in the embodied Christ helps us to avoid misconceiving our eternal destiny vertically, as “up in the heavens.” Instead it encourages us to reconceive the kingdom of God horizontally, as here and now, even if its eventual fulfillment lies in a future—an embodied future—that we anxiously await and actively anticipate.

Second, wrapped as we are in flesh and bones, and embodied in ever-expanding circles of social relations— family, neighborhood, community and world, materialist-friendly views of human nature make good sense of the urgency and importance of our call to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and to pursue this-worldly justice. Why? Because the fact that we are material beings highlights the fact that starvation, want, and physical impoverishment are kingdom concerns. The world of bullfrogs and butterflies, of economic systems and environmental hazards, the world of sex and love, of loneliness and connection, the world of factory farms and consumer goods—in short, the fully, physical world that both depresses and delights us, is precisely the world that matters to God. It is this world that God is restoring. Contrary to the sacred hymn, this world is our home. It is broken, disfigured, and dis-eased to be sure, but it matters to us. It matters to us because we are created for it in all of its physicality.

A materialist-friendly view of human nature also serves to protect us against turning our longings for a new day into longings for a disembodied existence in some far off and distant heaven. Like the prophets of long ago, whose longings were for this world finally to be as God intends—a world where lions lie down with lambs and swords are beaten into plowshares, where the hungry are fed and the broken hearted are lifted up—a materialist view of human nature can encourage us to eagerly long for and actively anticipate this embodied future that only God can realize. The way of Christ incarnate offers us this future. What it offers us is a new way to be human.

And, I might add, this future, this new way of being human, is one of the siren songs of emergent faith. And it’s a hopeful song, too. Those tired of singing the old world-desping, body-desping, social justice-rejecting, polarity-producing songs of our forebears, find this sort of song refresing, inspiring and deeply resonant.

But wait (I can hear the naysayer say), this sort of view denies that we’ve been made in God’s image. How can we have been made in God’s image if we’re not immaterial souls? Well, there are many ways that we human beings image God, and none requires that we be immaterial. We image God when we care for creation and contribute to the terrestrial flourishing of the created order. Indeed, this is what the Bible means when it speaks of our having been given “dominion.” To have dominion is to care for others, including non-human “others” like ocean and stream, octopus and salamander; to have dominion is to tend to the well being of all the earth.

We also image God when we live in loving relation to other human beings and invest ourselves in their flourishing and well-being. God is a Trinity, so it should come as no surprise that we image God in social and not just private ways. The tenor of the relation between the three persons of the Trinity is one of a harmonious and free exchange of love and joy. Engaging in acts of mercy, hospitality, love, kindness, and so on is to act like God. In fact, we image God best when we image Jesus, who welcomed the outcast, fed the hungry, gave sight to the blind, hated evil, and delighted in doing the work of the Father. We also image God in our suffering. God is love. To love is to open oneself up to suffering. And suffering love is God-love. When we lay down our lives for our friends, and yes, our enemies, too, we image God, who laid down his life for us in Jesus.

God is a society of three; so, that we bear God’s image in social ways ought not to surprise us. Moreover, it is hard to imagine how we might image God in the ways I’ve just described if we are isolated atoms or immaterial souls. In short, there is nothing in the doctrine of the imago Dei, rightly understood, that entails we are immaterial souls.

Skin and bone is what we are. Holy skin and bone. And what we've been set apart for is anticipating that new humanity, that new society of wholeness and flourishing. There's work to be done. And those of us called to that work get impatient when we're told that first we've got to figure out the right positions on a host of theological and philosophical-theological doctrines and issues. I don't think so. Not that I don't enjoy exploring philosophical-theological issues and doctrines (some of them anyway, some of the time). But I don't enjoy the social paralysis that endless debate oftentimes produces. And it's that paralysis that emergent types also loathe.

Okay, ‘nuff said. Tony Jones and The New Christians: Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier is coming up…..