Final Flesh

I think I've decided that the blog is not the venue for expository philosophizing. I think the journal article and the monograph evolved because of the need for sustained argumentation.

My last few fleshly posts have been like rocks skipping across the surface of an ocean of metaphysics underneath (still trying to decide on the aptness of that metaphor...), and I can see the eyes rolling back into their heads.

So, let me wrap this up with another of the marquee passages of scripture relevant to spiritual formation and our bodies. Paul writes in 1 Cor 9:

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one wins the prize? Run in such a way as to win the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to gain a crown that will not last. We do it to gain a crown that will last forever...

What is the "it"? Strict training. Strict train is what those who have intended to grow spiritually enter into. He continues:

Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly. I do not fight
like a man beating the air. No. I beat my body and make it my
slave.

I think the last sentence should be read as follows: instead of being a slave to my body and its desires, I make it my slave. That way it can work in service to me. I train it to do the things that I want to do.

The Flesh Again, With Fasting as an Example

OK, so I'm fully aware that there is a bit of revisionist history going on here, but I'd like to claim that among the early ascetics, those who got it right were the ones who saw that the way to spiritual maturity was not to transcend (or mortify) their flesh, but to transform their flesh. And the transformation process is one of reprogramming.

Let's take fasting as an example. I used to think that fasting was some means of bribing God (like people who go on hunger strikes to protest various causes). I want God to do something really bad, so I'll quit eating to show him how serious I am. And I don't want to discount the "fast and pray" injunctions and the relation between the two.

But my understanding of the practice of fasting has been transformed by the model of flesh and spirit I've been propounding. On this model, fasting is like doing spiritual calisthenics. My flesh is programmed to want food three times (or more per day); I don't have to have food for about 30-40 days, but I've been habituated to it. By fasting, I am practicing to let my spirit/person/soul have sway over the desires of the flesh. It builds up the "spirit muscle" so that when other kinds of fleshly desires may rear their ugly heads, my spirit has had practice at saying 'no' to such things. I see it very much along the lines of junior high basketball players practicing dribbling around chairs and crossing-over their dribble. This develops in them a skill, or a natural predilection, that is immediately transferable to the game situation.

I have found in my own life that when I am fasting consistently, I seem to have more spiritual power. I am "in shape" in spiritual life. When I don't fast, I tend to get a bit flabby and lazy and out of shape.

Flesh is neutral

The last post could leave the impression that the flesh is bad. On the interpretation I'm trying to articulate, flesh in itself is not bad. Christ became "flesh" -- the same Greek word the NIV translates as "sinful nature" most of the time in Paul's letters.

What I'm claiming is that flesh itself is neutral. Flesh can be trained or "programmed" to be a positive or a negative in our lives, because it is so capable of sustaining habits (see earlier post on this). The issue is that given the tendency to sin that we've inherited and given the fact that we exist in a very fallen culture which encourages the development of certain habits, the "flesh" for most of us is something we have to overcome when we become Christians.

The point of the spiritual disciplines, then, is to retrain the flesh to sustain positive habits. This is what Jesus did (WWJD). His flesh was a boon to his spiritual life, rather than a bane.

More to come...

(this bonus post for the day is brought to you by the fact that Red Sox are on TV again and I'm sitting here with the laptop!)

Spirit and flesh redux

OK, let's try this again. Galatians 5:16f in the NRSV (not the NIV, because it translates sarx as "sinful nature" rather than "flesh"):

Live by the spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the spirit, and what the spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other to prevent you from doing what you want.

Does this speak to anyone's experience other than mine? Or we might go to Romans 7:

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate... But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right but I cannot do it.

Here again we're talking about two different agendas at play. "I" (my spirit/soul that has been regenerated) want to do what's right, but this flesh that is also "me" seems to want other stuff that conflicts. Paul goes so far as to say that it is not "I" that do the bad stuff, but the sin dwelling in my flesh.

This is tough stuff to explain unless we have recourse to the actual, physical flesh that has become habituated in certain ways. Remembering that our brains are part of that, and that the neural pathways that have been formed govern (they don't dictate completely except in extreme situations) my thoughts, attitudes, emotions, etc. Here, then, is why spiritual formation must pay attention to our fleshly existence.

Spirit, flesh, and Mona Lisa

"The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak." So said Jesus about the disciples when they couldn't stay awake. There is a consistent ontology of flesh and spirit in Scripture. Some argue about this, but I see it pretty plainly. And I think the best argument for it is that such an ontology best explains the data of spiritual formation.

If this were a philosophy paper, I'd have to get a lot more sophisticated, but I don't think we lose too much by claiming that human beings are spirit and flesh. These are not two different parts that make up one whole (the way it takes hydrogen and oxygen atoms to make water molecules). Rather, there is an essential substance (the spirit/soul/person) and a mode of its existence (human flesh).
By way of analogy (and it's only an analogy), consider the Mona Lisa. The picture to the left is the "Mona Lisa" in the medium of crayon. This is possible, because there is something that IS the Mona Lisa, and that thing can be represented in different media.

So, we might say that the thing that is me (my spirit/soul/person) is currently "represented" in human flesh. It seems possible, then, that it could be represented in something else, like a spiritual body (the soma pneumatica of 1Cor. 15).

OK, lots of objections come to mind here (Could I be "represented" in beetle flesh? No. You couldn't. Perhaps I'll get to that in another post. Am I not essentially human? Hmmm... Let's just let that sit for a bit.) The point I want to draw out is that even when I'm "born again", my spirit may be reborn, and I genuinely desire and will to do the right things, but I'm still enfleshed. And we know what flesh means: habits. God doesn't seem to take away the habits of the flesh for most of us at conversion. The good news is, we don't have to be slaves to the flesh any more, and with the assistance of the Holy Spirit we can retrain our flesh.

Whoa... too much to digest. We'll let this sit and try again tomorrow. There's really some very important stuff for spiritual formation in all this.