4-ÿ ìåæäóíàðîäíàÿ êîíôåðåíöèÿ, ïîñâÿùåííàÿ íàñëåäèþ
ìèòðîïîëèòà Àíòîíèÿ Ñóðîæñêîãî
Karin Greenhead
Âîïëîùåíèå ÷åëîâåêà: íåêîòîðûå àñïåêòû òåëåñíîñòè è âîñïðèÿòèÿ
In a few weeks we will enter the season of Advent to
prepare for the incarnation in the flesh of the
only-begotten Son of the Father, begotten before the
creation of all worlds.
While the mystery and significance of Christ’s dual
nature has remained a continual subject of reflection for
saints, theologians and teachers down the ages, the
significance of our own incarnation and its implications has
not received the same kind of attention. Today, in the
context of ‘learning to see’, I would like to make some
observations on human embodiment and perception.
Metropolitan Anthony liked to say that God loved the
whole world, visible and invisible, into being. His
statement resonates with that of the Apostle John ((John III:
16-17) when he writes: “God so loved the world that he gave
his only-begotten Son . . . .that the world through Him
might be saved”
St Paul observes that the nature of God is perceptible to
us:
“Ever since the creation of the world his invisible
nature . . . . has been clearly perceived in the things that
have been made” (Romans I:20)
We ourselves are made in the image of God and according
to St Irenaeus of Lyons [1] “the glory of God is the human
person fully alive”
Concerning our embodiment, he states:
“Spirits without bodies will never be spiritual men and
women. It is our entire being, that is to say, the soul and
flesh combined, which, by receiving the spirit of God
constitutes the spiritual man.”. . .
THE HISTORICAL INCARNATION OF CHRIST
We could study history from two points of view that need
to be held in balance: one, that of the narrative of the
ongoing unfolding of the Fall of man; the other, that of the
preparation for the incarnation of Christ in the flesh; his
crucifixion (which according to all the Gospel accounts
shook the entire created world); his bodily resurrection and
ascension - the taking into heaven of that same human body -
and lastly Pentecost, the sending of the Spirit and all that
followed.
In taking flesh, Christ took on all that is of the flesh
- not only its mortality and suffering but human emotion,
human feeling of all kinds and human will - uniting them all
to Himself without confusion.
We seem relatively happy to talk about the incarnation of
Christ while finding it difficult to think about the
incarnation or ensoulment of man.
THE INCARNATION OR ENSOULMENT OF MAN
According to Genesis (I : 1 - 25), the history of mankind
began with the creation of the ‘heavens and the earth”, of
water, light, minerals, plants and animals. The description
of life before the Fall shows that the state of man in
Paradise was not static but consisted of movement, growth,
development and evolution. Of the dust of the earth, God
fashioned Adam, the one destined to be his son and
co-creator, and into his dusty, silent and unmoving nostrils
he breathed his own breath, making of him a living soul free
to roam, explore and discover the world.
In naming all earthly creatures, Adam realised that none
were like him. [2] At this point (the beginning of
self-knowledge) God put him to sleep and of his rib made
Eve. Mankind was created for relationship to all matter and
all living things. This relationship is grounded in the very
stuff of his own body, the dust of which he is made. Through
his bones he is indissolubly connected to the ‘other’: the
one who is beside me, with me, like me, but not me. His
embodiment confers on him both sensory and emotional
feeling, [3] the capacity for sympathy and empathy and the
vulnerability that Metropolitan Anthony found so important
in our relationships with God and other people. This
insight, that bodily movement and interaction are key to the
development of consciousness is at the forefront of
developments in neuroscience, psychology and philosophy
today [4] [5]
[6]
Created ‘a little lower than the angels’
[7] suspended
between heaven and earth, mankind was uniquely placed to
unite what was separate in his own body. [8] This notion of
suspension is echoed in the words of dancer and philosopher
Sondra Horton Fraleigh [9] when she says: “our body suspends us
between mystery and revelation, action and receptivity,
freedom and necessity, being and non-being.”
It is the moving, ensouled body that is key to mankind’s
greatness, strength and fragility.
HABITS AND HAZARDS OF THINKING.
Despite the pre-lapsarian, ontological groundedness in
matter and the centrality of the role of the body in
sacramental life and in establishing communication with
others, discussion relating to the physical world and the
human body is frequently framed in negative terms.
This may be due to problems in understanding the Fall
through which death entered the world. The Fall took place
as a result of a temptation to eat in order to become ‘wise’
‘as gods’ knowing good and evil. [10] This transgression was
fatally compounded when Adam blamed Eve, “the woman Thou
gavest me” for his own temptation. In so doing he accused
God himself while Eve in turn blamed the serpent. No-one
took responsibility.
Eve was tempted by the promise of becoming ‘like gods’.
Since gods are spirits, this seduction probably entails
rejection of the physical body. This temptation to knowledge
combined with a spirit-like or angelic status and power
reduces the capacity for feeling that enables us to engage
in dialogue. As we have noted earlier, it is this dialogue
between ourselves and the other or others that lies at the
root of our ability to understand both ourselves and other
people. The temptation to angelism [11] has remained a problem
throughout human history. It is enshrined in the now
much-criticised Cartesian body-mind dichotomy with its
concomitant pride of the mind and an exaltation of the
intellect over feeling that has persuaded us that we are
somehow above, creation rather than an integral part of it.
The casting of the body which is ‘the temple of the Holy
Spirit” as a source of evil has badly affected attitudes
towards women. Reference to the inferiority of women who
have sometimes been cast as ‘matter’ to the male ‘spirit’;
who have been thought to be less intelligent, less rational
and less spiritual than men and whose bodies have been
thought to be particular sources of temptation are legion
and can be found in many cultures throughout history.
[12]
Continuing to blame Eve and the body for the Fall
has contributed to a highly ambivalent attitude to human
incarnation which has remained largely unchallenged.
THE BODY
An emphasis on the dangers of the drives and desires ‘of
the flesh’ which we are encouraged to reject in favour of
‘the spirit’, and an unfortunate conflation of the Passions
with Passion, has sometimes lead to the rejection of Passion
and strong feeling, both of which remind us that we are
vulnerable and not in control of everything. An idea of the
spiritual person as someone who is ‘cool’ and in control has
developed. This is far from the vision of an ardent person
aflame with love and may not resonate with a Christian view
of mankind at all.
Blaming the body for temptations that arise in the mind,
heart and will is simply a way of distancing ourselves from
responsibility for our own thoughts, desires and feelings.
As St Maximus points out in his analysis of the process of
willing, it is not the body that takes decisions on how to
act but the mind,
the heart and above all,
the Will [13] - and the body enacts them.
Christ himself says that it is not the food that goes
into the mouth that defiles the body but what comes out of
it [14] – our words.
Each person’s body is uniquely his or her own - a
personal means of being in, experiencing and knowing the
world. Human identity and personhood are indissolubly of the
body and when we die, our unique way of being in the world
is lost to the world and other people. We each move and act in
a particular and recognisable way that carries our signature
(Stern, 2010) [15]. Through our senses we may perceive the
signature of God in the world he has created. Here, as St
Clement of Alexandria points out, lies the key to our
understanding of who God is:
“ We may gain some inkling of what God is if we attempt
by means of every sensation to reach the reality of each
creature, not giving up until we are alive to what
transcends it”.
We have observed that we discover and learn the world,
ourselves, others and therefore the sense of community
through the body. The importance of community to human life
‘each and all’ is recognized by the Church but some within
it tend to think this can best be achieved by insisting on
the following of regulations or conforming to approved forms
of behaviour: the letter, rather than the spirit of the law.
This attitude is the opposite of Christ’s approach to
others, addressing each person with his or her particular
needs as recounted in the Gospels.
The exaltation of the intellect and marginalization or
rejection of the body has resulted in three key fractures
that are aggravated by our attitude to matter:
An intrapersonal separation - between the body,
intellect and soul.
An interpersonal separation or disconnection from
others and, since human self-understanding develops
in relationship from understanding self and other,
an increase in the division between men and women
and their ability to understand one another.
Disconnection from the world to which we belong
and for which we are responsible.
As a result we suffer from:
• An inability to perceive God through the creation and a
willingness to exploit and abuse the created world.
• A rejection of one’s own feelings, especially strong
feeling. A lack of presence and commitment, understanding,
sympathy or empathy, and a willingness to blame, exploit and
abuse other people
• Mental, emotional and physical sicknesses and
disturbances related to disembodiment
• Difficulties in learning, growing and repenting
• An entrenched devaluation of practical and physical
work as compared to managerial and desk jobs
• A tendency to prefer the letter over the spirit of the
law
Does this not look as if mankind has been successfully
persuaded to reject both himself and his calling?
SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE SENSES
[17]
St Maximus the confessor emphasizes the important role of
the senses in recognizing the divine Logos. It is
interesting to note that he begins with the appeal of the
sensory world to the senses in stating that the sensible
world draws the five senses to itself and provides them with
information. This information permits the senses to
apprehend the essences (logoi) of created things. They in
turn activate the faculties of the soul which, if it is
“clear-sighted enough to perceive truth” in this way
perceives the divine Logos. He assigns a specific
sense-organ to each faculty of the soul. The eye is an image
of the mind; the ear, of reason; the sense of smell is
related to the incensive faculty – that which excites action
in us; that of taste to the appetitive or desiring faculty
and the sense of touch to the vivifying faculty – an image
of life. He also states that the soul is not passive in its
reception of information but reaches out to the perceptible
world through the senses to ‘create a world of spiritual
beauty within the understanding.” This bi-directional
movement linking the soul and its senses with the
perceptible world and its essences is strongly reminiscent
of what has come to be referred to as ‘intersubjectivity’ by
philosophers and psychologists today. [18]
If we cannot see we cannot look at God’s work or the
works of His beloved, man. In refusing to look we refuse to
see and understand, to discriminate, cherish or reject.
“Him who has ears, let him hear.”
[19] If we cannot listen how
will we hear the Spirit, one another or other creatures for
whom we are responsible?
The senses of smell and taste are often thought to be
primitive but in Dionysius’ view: “Perfumes, as they strike
our senses, represent spiritual illumination”.
By the nose we identify people and things and their
qualities and discern the stink of corruption or the perfume
of the spirit. The Eucharist offers us the body of Christ
who frequently gave others physical and not only spiritual
food, eating and drinking with them even after the
Resurrection.
In tasting we discern what is good, what to absorb and
what to spit out and reject: ‘Oh Taste and see how gracious
the Lord is’ (Ps. 34). ‘Taste ye of the Well of immortality”
(Liturgy of St John Chrysostom).
By touch we test or prove the concrete reality,
communicate, harm and heal. Christ offered proof of the
reality of his resurrection in the flesh by inviting Thomas
to touch his wounds and healed through touch and being
touched. [20] Today there is a heightened awareness of the misuse
of touch, transgressive or inappropriate touching and many
people suffer from not having been touched enough. We seek
movement and touch based therapies and at the same time as
we need and crave physical contact and the healing it
offers, we are suspicious of it.
Proprioception and kinaesthesia are senses we take for
granted that inform us about the position and orientation of
our body in space, helping us to negotiate our passage
through it, to stabilise ourselves against the pull of
gravity, to co-ordinate and modify our movements, and to
adjust the amount of force we are using. Without the
multisensory symphony that, according to Stern (2010), produces the sense of
alertness, vitality and being alive, we could not function
at all in the world. The philosopher Maxine Sheets-Johnstone
has called on evidence from philosophers and scientists from
a very wide range of disciplines [21] to demonstrate the
incontrovertible significance of movement, especially
self-movement, in coming to know the world and in the
formation of consciousness in all animate life. Movement is
our mother tongue, pre-lingual, “the mother of all
cognition’ (Sheets-Johnstone, 2011, xxiv-xxv).
[22]
THE QUALITY OF PRESENCE
Rejection or avoidance of the body affects our ability to
be truly present, in the moment, alive to things in the
world, events as they unfold and to the person or people in
front of us. Many people in the modern world live in a state
of distraction and are always thinking about something else.
It is only in openness and commitment to the present moment
that real encounters of all kinds happen, encounters with
others, with phenomena of the world and with God himself.
Presence is important in the time-based, or performing arts
that often train this explicitly. [23]
So why does our own incarnation present us with so many
problems?
One source of difficulty may be found in the physical and
emotional suffering, that we experience in the body in
addition to pleasure. However, in addition to the problems
of mortality, there is the issue of the greatness of our
calling (another popular theme of Metropolitan Anthony). We
were created sons of God, co-workers with Christ. At the
same time we experience ourselves as held down by a heavy,
mortal body that even in good health is vulnerable to
sickness and injury and has many daily needs such as food
and rest. It takes us some time to understand that our
mortal body is not only the locus of personal experience and
expression but imposes limitations on us. Situating us in
time and space, it is a kind of school, the site of learning
and growth. We experience many difficulties in relation to
other people who may be “hell” for us as Sartre has pointed
out, [24] and at the same time we feel alone. As a result of
pain, frustration and indignity we may experience a strong
desire to escape, to transcend our limitations, to distance
ourselves from our own weaknesses, sins and crimes, to split
off parts of ourselves. Ascetic practices are designed to
help to free us from the pressure of some of these
difficulties but, all too frequently, a rigid and punitive
approach to asceticism sometimes disguises ambition and
pride. They should be used with discretion, according to
personal need with a view to their purpose in freeing the
person from whatever binds them and an increase in freedom
and love.
It is difficult to accept ourselves, to live our own
incarnation and the call to live in both the visible and
invisible worlds unless we are able to tolerate uncertainty
and to say “Thy will be done”.
Most religions, including Christianity, tend to make
sharp distinctions between the sacred and the secular. We
know, however that the entire created world reveals the
glory of God, [25] and is called to resurrection and we reclaim
matter for the Kingdom by blessing material things: people’s
bodies, food, icons, rivers, cars . . . .
Our attitude to the body, the material world and human
activity should be connected to the orthodox sacramental
attitude to matter and an understanding that one could be
called to many different kinds of work which becomes for us
an extension of the Liturgy into the world. As a musician I
have sometimes met people who made it very clear that they
thought that I was engaged in a rather unworthy activity and
should justify it by becoming a therapist or working with
people who have problems.
I would like to end with some reminders made, in the
first place, to myself but which I hope you may find useful.
1. We should attend to and care for the material world,
as a revelation of the divine presence, as a source of
healing and of good, as the field of our actions and
responsibilities, as a school and as a sacrament. Olivier
Clément points out that “Early Christianity was
fundamentally concerned not with the immortality of the
soul, which was regarded as incontrovertible . . . but with
the resurrection of the body, of the cosmos as a whole, the
body of humanity.” [26] Therefore we should think again about
what we mean when we divide the sacred from the secular.
3. We should cultivate the use of our senses
which will inform intuition and all our thinking
with a view to learning, understanding and relating
to the world, others and ourselves better. As St.
Clement of Alexandria [16] asserts: “We may gain some
inkling of what God is if we attempt by means of
every sensation to reach the reality of each
creature, not giving up until we are alive to what
transcends it.” We should approach each person as
another myself, unique, made in the image of God.
The Holy Spirit can inspire anyone, anywhere.
Someone older, younger, more or less intelligent,
educated, spiritual or unspiritual may see or
understand something we do not or reveal something
important to us.
4. We should study the works of man, whether of
science, art, everyday life and learn from them, not
rejecting or fearing what we have designated as
‘secular’ knowledge but discerning truth wherever it
is to be found.
5. We should commit ourselves personally and
passionately to what we do and accept the
consequences.
6. We should test attitudes and practices handed
down to us, and the words of those in authority,
against the Gospel, the teaching of the Church and
consider them in the light of current context,
circumstance, time, influence, pressure and our
experience. Our experience of all these things
shapes and changes not our essential human nature,
not what we are but how we are, our
manner of being. The possession of high office does
not guarantee insight, true knowledge or rightness.
We should pray for and take responsibility for those
with power.
7. The contemplative beauty of church services
should not lull us to sleep but galvanise us into
action. The body is designed for movement. Human
beings are designed to be dynamically and ardently
engaged with life, to move and to act. To fulfill
our nature we need to be courageous and unafraid.
8. We should be true to ourselves and not fearful
but daring, able to risk knowing that God loves us
unconditionally and that we will not fall out of his
hands.
Our focus on the material world should help us cultivate
our sense of wonder which, according to Eugen Fink, will
help to dislodge our indolence, prejudice and reliance on
the given and the familiar, moving us towards “the creative
poverty of not yet knowing” and thence, with da Vinci’s
“fear and longing”, to what Maxine Sheets-Johnstone calls
“the timeless, passionate labour of love on behalf of wisdom
that constitutes a philosophic act.” [27] Such an act is the
necessary prelude to the proper work of caring for the
created world to which we are called.
Karin Greenhead, London, Sept 5/ 11, 2013. Revised Sept
23, 2013.
ENDNOTES:
[1]
Irenaeus of Lyons (c.2nd century – AD 202);
Maximus the confessor, Ambigua 7 PG 91:1109CD in John
Meyendorff, (1975), Byzantine theology: historical trends
and doctrinal themes. London & Oxford: Mowbrays.
[2]
Genesis II:20
[3]
(Damasio, A. (2000). The feeling of what happens: body,
emotion and the making of consciousness. London: Vintage
Books; Sheets-Johnstone, (2011). The primacy of movement.
;, Stern, D. N. (2010). Forms of vitality: exploring
dynamic experience in psychology, the arts, psychotherapy
and development. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[4]
(Damasio, A. (2000). The feeling of what happens: body,
emotion and the making of consciousness. London: Vintage
Books; Sheets-Johnstone, (2011). The primacy of movement.
Stern, D. N. (2010). Forms of vitality: exploring
dynamic experience in psychology, the arts, psychotherapy
and development. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[5]
Polanyi, M. (1966/2009). Tacit knowing. Chicago:
UNIversity of Chicago Press, p.15
[6]
Damasio, A.(2000). The feeling of what happens: body,
emotion and the making of consciousness. London: Vintage
Books.
[7]
Psalm 8:v; Hebrews II:vii, ix
[8]
Thunberg, L. (1995) Microcosm and mediator: the
theological anthropology of Maximus the confessor.
(second edition) p.402. Maximus is concerned with man
as a mediator between different kinds of separation. P 402
‘the character of ‘natural’ human mediation deals
particularly with the visible and invisible worlds, in both
of which mankind, in his composite nature, participates.
[9]
Fraleigh, 1987. Dance and the lived body: a descriptive
aesthetics. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
[10]
Genesis III:5
[11]
Clément, O. (1985). Foreword (p.7) in Evdokimov, P. The
sacrament of love: the nuptial mystery in the light of the
Orthodox tradition (Anthony P. Gythiel & Victoria
Steadman Trans.). St Vladimir’s Seminary Press: Crestwood,
NY.
[12]
Evdokimov, P. (1985). The sacrament of love: the nuptial
mystery in the light of the Orthodox tradition (Anthony
P. Gythiel & Victoria Steadman Trans.). St Vladimir’s
Seminary Press: Crestwood, NY. Pp19 – 27.
[13]
Nellas, P. (1987). Deification in Christ: Orthodox
perspectives on the nature of the human person. (Norman
Russell, trans.). Crestwood, NY: ST Vladimir’s Seminary
Press. Pp. 138-9, a comment by Kabasilas.
[14]
Matthew XV
[15]
Stern, D. N. (2010). Forms of vitality: exploring dynamic
experience in psychology, the arts, psychotherapy and
development. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[16]
Clement of Alexandria, c.140-220 AD
[17]
Maximus the Confessor (7th century AD). Ambigua,
PG 91, 1248A-1249C, in Panayiotis Nellas, 1987
Deification in Christ: the nature of the human person,
St Vladimir’s Press, New York), ‘ The sensible world is
naturally fitted to provide the five senses with
information, since it falls within their scope and draws
them to an apprehension of itself. . . . And the bodily
senses themselves, in accordance with the more divine inward
essences befitting them, may be said to provide the
faculties of the soul with information, since they gently
activate these faculties through their own apprehension of
the inward essences (logoi) of created things; and
through this apprehension the divine Logos is recognized, as
if in a written text, by those clear-sighted enough to
perceive truth.
Thus the senses have been called exemplary images of
the faculties of the soul, since each sense with its organ,
that is, its organ of perception, has naturally been
assigned beforehand to each of the soul’s faculties in an
analogous manner and by a certain hidden principle. It is
said that the sense of sight belongs to the intellective
faculty, that is, to the mind, the sense of hearing to the
rational faculty, that is, to reason, the sense of smell to
the incensive faculty, the sense of taste to the appetitive
faculty, and the sense of touch to the vivifying faculty.
Or, to put it more plainly, the rgan of sight that is, the
eye, is simply an image of the mind; the organ of hearing,
that is the ear, is an image of reason; the organ of smell,
that is, the nose, is an image of the incensive faculty;
taste is an inage of the appetitive faculty; and touch an
image of life.
The soul . . .makes use of these senses . . .and . .
reaches out . . .to sensible things. If it uses the senses
properly, discerning . . .the manifold inner essences of
created beings, and . . . .transmitting to itself all the
visible things in which God is hidden . . . .then by use of
its own free choice it creates a world of spiritual beauty
within the understanding.”
[18]
See in particular the work of the philosophers Husserl,
Merleau-Ponty and others, and that of the psychologists
Dissanayake, Trevarthen, and Cross and neurologist Sacks.
[19]
Matthew XI:13
[20]
Mark V: 24-34. Christ could not see “the woman with the
issue of blood” when she touched his robe as she was behind
him but he felt power go out of him and asked who had
touched him.
[21]
(various types of psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience,
biology, zoology and anthropology)
[22]
Sheets-Johnstone: M. (2011) The Primacy of Movement.
Amsterdam/Philadeplph: John Betjamins Publishing Company.
(expanded 2nd. Edition)
[23]
Rodenburg, P.(2007/9) Presence London:Penguin Books;
Goodridge, J. Rhythm and timing in movement and
performance: drama, dance and ceremony.London: Jessica
Kingsley Publishers.
[24]
Sartre, J-P. Huis clos
[25]
Psalm XIX: Isaiah VI: 3
[26]
Clément, O. The roots of Christian mysticism. New
City
[27]
All cited in Chapter 7 of Sheets-Johnstone, M. 2011. The
primacy of movement. (expanded second edition)Amsterdam/Philadelphia:
John Benjamins Publishing Company.
