Splendor.

"It was bodily, sensuous human beings whom He created to be His image, and His first commandment was "Be fruitful, and multiply"...
They (were) His image in their whole particular bodily existence...
The 'redemption of the body' begins here and now, in the liberation of the bodily nature
which has been suppressed out of fear,
for the body truly belongs to the Lord and the Lord to the body -
the work of the Spirit through Christ is God pervades His creation".

Jurgen Moltmann : God in Creation.



Freedom (as depicted in a public statue).

Here's your starter for ten (as they say on the British program, University Challenge),
what's wrong with this picture?


Well, if you followed a principally Platonic notion of liberating the soul from the body, or a medieval (Aristotelian) approach that the body is formed (subservient) to the soul, or a modernal perspective which viewed the mind or will (now more in vogue than using soul) as the key instrument of the body, then you would probably approve of this rendition of this form... manly, yet modest;
an affirmation, perhaps, that God's key work cannot be viewed primarily as to do with the body, but a truly 'divine' propensity to look above and beyond such a confinement to something more 'pure', more ethereal - a higher glory.

It all sounds so noble - the declaring of some great, higher good, but in reality, just as when we view the original of this statue, it all comes crashing down....



The original work of Michelangelo had a very different 'glory':
Take a good, long look at this masterpiece, and you'll begin to understand why the 'piety' in the above version is such a mistake. I have been privileged enough to view a copy of his Renaissance masterpiece, on permanent display in London's Victoria and Albert museum, and it is simply breathtaking. The artist here is clearly seeking to make us recognize something which our times, like those blighted 'ladders to enlightenment' mentioned above, totally fail to see or understand. The central point of creation is indeed what God fashioned on that sixth day, not because of the spatial location of our planet, but because here, from the clay, from amongst the realm of flesh, God formed a creature which, in its bodily form, truly reveals and expresses something concerning His nature and His glory - that is the wonder of what we are. Like so much of the world's misguided philosophy, Christianity has so often in its history become so woefully benighted because it has neglected or miserably 're-interpreted' this astounding truth, and yet, there, in the core of the story of our creation and our redemption, this great gem glows undinted by such dross. It is when we begin to grasp the weight of this faith, as touched upon in my opening quote or so richly expressed in Michelangelo's art, that we find ourselves facing an uncomfortable, perhaps painful, yet finally marvelous transition.

We do not inhabit a realm that was made to merely fall and be judged - a mistake to be done away with... no, no! God inhabited the creation Himself - He was refreshed by His handiwork, and as He communed with Man, He sanctified such as Holy... a true reflection of His nature and goodness. That is why a full redemption is coming, and that is why we should, as Christians, be shocked and appalled at theology and art which professes a 'form' of godliness alien and foreign to the faith which focuses upon a naked child, a stripped, crucified man and a bodily risen Christ. If the physical, in this fashion, is not ours, then we have nothing to say to our fallen, broken world, for Christ is the redeemer of this earth, this creation, and His life, His treasure, will indeed be expressed here, in that day of glorification, forever.

That, perhaps, more than anything else is why discovering the splendor of the human, the body, is so important, to turn away from distortions of the goal, to the true splendor, the true prize, made ours in Jesus Christ.