I just read Scott Prather’s article in American Theological Inquiry entitled: “The Body and Human Identity in Postmodernity and Orthodoxy”. It’s really a condensed read on somaticism’s reach into theology. The article is roughly divided into three parts that I would call 1) why reductions and ‘isms’ won’t give Christian theology the impetus needed to work out somatic issues, 2) why orthodoxy can give us guidance on the body as a relative yet not subjective being, and 3) how our relativity to the Body of Christ is our body’s natural estate.
The first part appears to me to be obligatory for the author. The second and third parts are a nice peer into the work of Eastern Orthodoxy of late and parsed statements about how we can view anthropology without flinging ourselves into the pure subjectivisms described in part one. Here’s a nice quote from part 2:
“To be human is to be made “in the image of God,” a body made from “the dust of the earth” enlivened by and united with God through the soul. In this tradition, the soul is itself not a disembodied “part” of the human being, but embodied aspects of the person which reflect and tend towards the image of God (the logos of the Father) including intellect, will, and desire.”
The euangelion here is that the whole journal is free online at: atijournal.org.
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