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TODAY’S Advent calendar reflection explores bodiliness and what it means to be “fully human,” according to Irenaeus of Lyon (c.130 - 202), a second century bishop. These central ideas — deification and incarnation — are theological ways to speak about the purpose of Jesus being born human. This post is excerpted from my 2009 book, A People’s History of Christianity: The Other Side of the Story.
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Irenaeus believed that the love of God was bound up with the world that God had made; there existed an intimate relationship between matter and spirit, especially demonstrated in the Christian idea that Christ was born as a human being. As a result, he developed the concept of deification, that “God became man, so man could become like God.” He further explained that, “Christ became what we are, so that He might bring us to be what He Himself is.”
Creation is good since God could never become evil. And salvation is a kind of dance, a process of growing ever more to be like God. God made humans in God’s image; yet, humans backed away from God. Jesus came as a human being to be with us; in his death and resurrection, Christ went back to God taking our common humanity with him. Irenaeus’ vision is one of cosmic unity, where heaven and earth, spirit and matter, divine and mundane, reunite in the beauty of universal love.
Not only does Irenaeus affirm an innate spirituality of creation, but he also emerges as a Christian humanist. Because human beings participate in the journey of becoming like God, the divine presence infuses human activity. As one historian notes, “Human nature, and so human actions, can no longer transpire without the divine nature.” Iranaeus’ view is mystical, spiritual, and cosmic—very like Gnosticism. But, unlike the Gnostics, it is holistic, not dualistic. Salvation is not a secret reserved for an enlightened few; rather, the love of God is visible to “all living on earth.” Deification affirms human capacities rather than consigning humanity to an endless cycle of evil that can only be escaped.
Ireneaus was probably the first Christian theologian to teach deification, but he was by no means the only. One of his contemporaries, Clement of Alexandria, said, “The Logos of God had become man so that you might learn how a man may become God.”
At first, it may seem difficult understanding how deification is a practice: how do Christians do it? Harvard professor Stephanie Paulsell suggests that the emphasis on the goodness of creation emerges in the practice of honoring the body, “the difficult friendship with our bodies.” She describes this practice as part of “a way that bears witness to God,” because “the body reflects God’s own goodness.” Early Christians, like Ireneaus, believed in deification because they believed that God had become incarnate—that he was actual flesh and blood in the exact same ways we are—in Jesus Christ. Honoring the body, therefore, signals human connection with God through Christ. Intrinsic to salvation is befriending creation. In some ways, deification, this honoring the body, is the flip side of imitating Christ. We imitate Jesus because he first imitated us; we are woven of the same spiritual cloth.
“The glory of God,” Ireneaus wrote, “is the human person fully alive.” After meditating and studying the saying, I finally began to understand. Ireneaus was not simply being cranky, attacking Gnostics because they interfered with his authority. No, he tried to articulate a very difficult part of the Christian way of life: to remember in all things that, beginning with Jesus’s humanity, the body is a sacred gift. Salvation works itself out within the context of this world, it is a process of honoring creation, of acting humanly toward God, ourselves, and our neighbors.
From A People’s History of Christianity
It’s when we face for a moment
the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know
the taint in our own selves, that awe
cracks the mind’s shell and enters the heart:
not to a flower, not to a dolphin,
to no innocent form
but to this creature vainly sure
it and no other is god-like, God
(out of compassion for our ugly
failure to evolve) entrusts,
as guest, as brother,
the Word.
— Denise Levertov
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Bodily vulnerability is something we all share, no matter how different we are in other ways. We are all vulnerable to pain and illness. We will all die.
Early Christians preached that knowledge of our shared vulnerability ought to lead us into solidarity with every other human body, especially the bodies of the poor. Our fragile bodies require communal attention, and so honoring the body is a shared practice, one for which we need each other in profound ways.
— Stephanie Paulsell
God LOVES everybody.
God loves EVERY body.
God loves every BODY.
— Diana Butler Bass
An Advent Event
Shane Claiborne has picked Freeing Jesus as the December book of the Red Letter Christian Book Club! Read the book and join us in conversation via ZOOM on December 19 at 7pm. This is a free event. Click here for information and the sign-up link.
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I got out My much underlined People's History of Christianity and reread from there your post. An aha moment. I was underlining in pink those days, during the first read as I was struggling with "knowing God loved me fuly, but the Church did not. " I only added a few pink underlines. and, I put an exclaimation poont behind an original underline "We imitate Jesus becuause He first imitated us: we are woven of the same spiritual cloth!" Page 39 Worth carrying in a pocdket to remind me when I am discouraged.
Stefani and Joe purchased a copy of this beautiful work by Br Roy Parker at Mount Calvary. Now Joe has it hanging in his Philadelphia apartment. It is full of memories.