Theology of the Body: an answer to questions of our age

The aim of the present dissertation is to offer a new reading of the role of the body in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. I will focus on passage §312, which immediately precedes the discussion on Physiognomy and Phrenology. I will read this passage in the context of the chapter on Reason. The idea of Reason is, I argue, to search for an organic whole, a shape (Gestalt) in nature. A self-developing, independent Gestalt is found instead in the human body. I will analyse how the human body, however, fails as a Gestalt, and how this failure is at the same time a failure of an organicist world-view. The challenge will be to analyse the nature of the Hegelian body, while recognizing that Hegel himself does not analyse it further. I will ask if the Hegelian body is that of psychoanalysis, by referring to Lacan’s theory of the formative function of the Gestalt of the body. I claim that the Hegelian body is similar but ultimately incompatible with the Lacanian one. I will find a striking similarity however with Deleuze’s and Guattari’s idea of a body without organs. I will look at the Hegelian body through the analysis of bodies without organs in A Thousand Plateaus. Finally, the ambition will be to problematize Deleuze’s and Guattari’s idea of a body without organs by seeing it all too compatible with Hegel’s analysis of the phrenologist’s body. I will also argue that Hegel’s analysis of the human body in §312 has an important historical dimension, which we have to take into account when we discuss the ethics of a bodies without organs on the one hand, and the nature of the Hegelian body on the other.

A brief introduction of John Paul II's catecheses on human love in the divine plan, for pastors and theology students

Teologia w Polsce 13,2 (2019), s. 5–26, 2019

The article explores how Personalist Philosophy can be helpful for Theology by focusing on the concrete topic of the body. The renewed philosophical interest in the body is important for Christian Theology inasmuch as the latter is centered on the concreteness of the Incarnation. The article follows Gabriel Marcel's approach as a guideline to review the understanding of the body proper to Personalism. In this approach, the body is seen as the person's relational presence in the world and among others and as the openness of the person towards transcendence. The richness of this approach is explored in three important areas of dogmatic theology: Christology, Sacramentology, and the Theology of Creation. The article exemplifies the circularity between Philosophy and Theology in the concrete topic of the body.

2019

Susanna Wesley’s writings are intricate and complex as they illustrate a theology of embodiment stemming from the Incarnation. Her meditations and journal entries reveal a spirituality of the body, a contribution in the history of Methodism that has been undervalued. This paper places Susanna Wesley (1669–1742) in dialogue with theologian, Elisabeth Moltmann-Wendel (1926–2016), on the subject of embodiment. Susanna Wesley was on a continuum of change as she moved from strict societal constraints and ecclesial expectations of women in the late 17th and 18th centuries to an enlarged view of humankind. She expressed this movement as “becoming a lover of oneself.” The self-possession with which she opposed the views of her forceful father, Dr. Annesley, is noteworthy for a young girl not quite thirteen. Dr. Annesley was a leader of the Dissenting cause, which found fault with the dominant Church of England. Susanna, against her father’s wishes, adhered to the Church of England!

Studia Theologica: Nordic Journal of Theology, 62:1 (2008) pp. 25-43

In this article I discuss the question of how to speak of the body in theology after Friedrich Nietzsche's critique of Christianity as nihilistic. A purely theoretical and a-historic approach, such as could be found in much doctrinal theology as well as philosophy after Descartes, runs the risk of objectifying the body through its representations of it. The phenomenological approach to embodiment would instead help theology to avoid treating the body as a thing and instead as a communicative and expressive medium for relationships with divinity as well as other human beings. A critical theological somatology after Nietzsche would have to speak of the body through genealogical accounts of the traces of the body in biblical and theological texts as well as in religious practices such as prayer, liturgy and hymns with the aim of correlating this theological tradition with the articulations and configurations of embodiment today.

Philosophy, Theology and the Sciences, 2016

In this article, I explore what might be the implications of Merleau-Ponty's later ontological turn in his phenomenological writings for getting beyond a dermal metaphysics. Relying heavily on his idea of the chiasm and its implications for sense and sensibility as critical pieces of ontology in generative phenomenology, I consider how the concept of chiasm could serve as a philosophical concept that may aid theologians in articulating the breadth of Christ's meaning for all creation as God incarnate-especially as with the idea of 'deep incarnation. ' Articulating a connection to deep incarnation prevents one from understanding Merleau-Ponty's concept of the flesh as banal pantheism, while providing a rich philosophical language for deep incarnation. 1 I have used the term 'multivalent,' but Lawrence Hass uses the term 'multiplicity' following Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari to describe the overlapping complexity of

Philippiniana Sacra, 2014

This article is an introduction to John Paul II's catechesis on human love, also known as the Theology of the Body. In this essay, the authors highlight and explain twenty essential themes from the original text and relate some of these themes in the Philippine context. These themes revolve around the principle that the body is gift, and as such, is capable of revealing the divine image, in which every human being is made. This positive view of the body becomes possible by recapturing man's original experience in Genesis which, according to John Paul II, has three dimensions: original solitude, original unity and original nakedness. The article summarily explains what he means by these three concepts, and then re-echoes the Holy Father's claim that the body's capacity to make visible the divine reality is fulfilled in Jesus Christ, who is the Incarnate Word of God. This is why the understanding of marriage found in the original text reminds us that the vocation of married love is to imitate Christ's self-giving love for the Church. This reminder helps elevate the common secular understanding, and in this way, helps recapture the deeper beauty found in being created male and female.

Studia Universitatis Babeș-Bolyai - Theologia Orthodoxa, 2022

In our current world, the human body has a most central place. On the one hand, we are called to respect and take care of our body. On the other hand, we often face cases of a strong disregard for the body or even attempts to damage or destroy it. What can Christian theology offer to the relevant debates? This article takes Hesychast theology, and in particular the writings of Gregory Palamas, as a case study, and tries to show that this teaching provides many opportunities to articulate and explain our enormous respect for the body. The following topics are analyzed: a) the spiritual dispositions imprinted (ἐνσημαινόμεναι) on the body; b) the participation of the body in theōsis, now and in the age to come; c) the transformation of the body; and d) the role of the human heart.