Embodied Existence: Our Common Life in God

Introduction

Every theology emerges out of a particular context. The context of this book is the COVID- 19 pandemic that has tormented people around the world since late 2019 . Causing immense suffering, persistent health effects, and even deaths as well as social polarization and conflicts, the pandemic has led us to reconsider the ways how we think about the world and—even more importantly—how we live our lives. This has affected areas as diverse as health, education, economy, work, science, traveling, sports, culture, or family and spiritual life. And it has also had an impact on our theologizing. For me personally, three moments were of utmost importance in this regard. My life as an academic theologian and a practicing Christian suddenly shifted to an online mode. No more conferences in cities around the world, no more research visits to libraries and study centers in various locations near and far, no physical participation in worship services together with sisters and brothers in faith. It was now about sitting in front of my computer screen for extended periods. In addition, I all of a sudden found myself enclosed in limited space for long weeks and months with a very small group of people—my family—an experience that turned out to be a blessing, though challenging it was at times. Finally, as a person for whom regular workout represents an important part of daily routine, I was forced to change my athletic habits. Outdoor running, in isolation from other people, has become my predominant sports activity. Since the beginning of 2021 (when I began keeping track), I have so far run over 1 , 400 km. In addition to being a great way to keep both physically and mentally fit, running has for me also become a practice for raising awareness of my body, its connection with my mind and spirit, and my relation to others and the world. All of these, together, have led me to reflect on and reconsider the fundamental significance of the body for our theological understanding of what it means to be human. Human existence is an embodied existence. Living as God-created bodies—no matter whether in face-to-face encounters or through online presence—we are called to relate to others, thus realizing our humanity alongside and as part of the entire creation. The COVID- 19 pandemic and the isolation caused therewith have, ironically, only deepened this conviction and made it more acute. The present book is my attempt to theologically elaborate on this central insight from an ecumenical Christian perspective. It unfolds in six chapters.

Chapter 1 begins from the premise that God has created the world and everything in it because God yearns to share God’s story with creation; God wants God’s story become our story. The category of story is introduced as an irreplaceable element for the conceiving of human identity; human existence is a life in search of a story. From a Christian perspective, people are invited to make sense of their existence by participating in God’s story with creation, as testified to in the Scriptures. It is this story, I suggest, that draws us into God, thus enabling us to have what I call our common life in God. I seek to show, however, that entering God’s story does not necessarily mean being absorbed by it to the degree of losing one’s own identity. Rather, one reinvents one’s identity by being integrated into the story. Thus, one becomes a character in this story, and as such is expected to not only tell but also to embody it.

The body is the topic of chapter 2. To be sure, materiality/corporeality is an essential mark of God’s creation, including humankind. The epistemological significance of the body is recognized because the pursuit of knowledge (about God, the world, oneself) is inextricably linked with a commitment to praxis in which the body stands at the center as a locus of reflection and action. Therefore, to be created—and, more specifically, to be human—means to be a body. Finding its expression both in God’s continued act(s) of creation and—particularly for Christian identity—in Jesus’s incarnation, human embodied existence is interdependent as humans comprise, together with the rest of God’s creation, a meshwork of mutually intertwined life. As a result, human embodied existence is both vulnerable and relational. In this respect, the issue of vulnerability and, significantly, brokenness is discussed in the context of human corporeality. At the same time, to be human means to be a body-self that relates to the other—to other body-selves, both human and nonhuman, thus constituting a social body. In the community of Jesus’s followers, the social body is interpreted as the body of Christ since the community’s members, through their own bodies, embody Christ’s words and deeds.

Chapter 3 seeks to make a case that in order to grasp and pursue the calling of relating to the other, one needs imagination. Imagination is first discussed theologically as a creative, yet distorted, dimension of being human. It is through the power of imagination transformed by divine grace, so the central argument of this chapter goes, that one can participate in God’s pursuit of new creation. This consists of both challenging the status quo of various ills, injustices, and evils and envisioning and working for a new reality, characterized by justice, peace, and reconciliation. Such a rupture in the present fabric of reality can be imaginatively accounted for by "kin-dom of God," a relational symbol underscoring that God’s inbreaking reign is fundamentally materialized through interpersonal encounters and embodiment. Finally, the notions of imagination and body are brought together in what I refer to as the imagined body. This term accounts for the process in which imagination empowers one to relate to the other, using one’s material body as the point of entry to the other’s experience and story. Thus, the imagined body is a locus for sharing specific narratives, creating common stories, and pursuing universal visions. In this sense, the imagined body represents a desirable complement to the material body, or perhaps more appropriately—as the previous chapter has shown—the body-self.

Enabled by imagination sensitized through God’s grace, the participation in God’s pursuit of new creation implies transformation, as chapter 4 shows. In particular, transformation is, I suggest, the ultimate horizon to which God leads God’s creation. Empowered by God’s grace to use their imagination, people reinterpret their life stories in acts of metanoia to overcome the brokenness of the conditio humana that is a result of sin. Such a metanoia—an authentic existential conversion—is to be interpreted in narrative terms of reevaluating one’s own story, or, restorying. In that way, people can truly pursue their existence as embodied beings toward our common life in God. Their quest is motivated by the refusal to accept the status quo, characterized by the brokenness and woundedness of creation. In this process, the reality is seen through the lens of justice, peace, mercy, acceptance, and reconciliation as fundamental features of God’s inbreaking reign—the kin-dom of God. Created in the image of God, human beings are called by God to follow God, thus realizing their full humanity and participating in the eschatological transformation of the entire creation.

This process is understood as profoundly relational and, therefore, relationality is in chapter 5 explored as an essential feature of human embodied existence. For a theological understanding of relationality, the ultimate paradigm is the operating dynamics in both the immanent and economic Trinity. The triune God as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit relate to each other to create the perfect fellowship of love, acceptance, inclusion, and creativity. Unable to remain contained within Godself, this communion overflows with meaning and potential to include God’s creation in this process. Since the triune God is fundamentally relational, humans—as carriers of God’s image—too are relational beings. After discussing examples of the human negation of relationality, such as alienation or identitary temptations, the chapter employs the notions of resilience and mutuality to highlight that our embodied existence is enabled by the grace of God who relates to humankind and the whole creation, while respecting their diversity. Furthermore, they remind us of our calling to relate to others, especially the poor and marginalized, in solidarity and respect. To conclude this chapter, two concepts of incarnational discipleship and kenotic presence, respectively, are discussed as they represent, I suggest, an important theological lens for considering the ways in which human beings can relate to the other dialogically, transformatively, and reciprocally.

The relational matrix of the human, the other (in both their human and nonhuman forms), and God opens space for creating an authentic community. In the final chapter, I seek to push this idea further by introducing the notion of comm/unity as a meshwork of multiple relationships by dignified individuals who appreciate the interdependence and essential unity of humankind based on their createdness in the image of God as well as human interconnection with the rest of creation. The aim is to pursue kin-dom—a common life in the force field of God’s love, mercy, and acceptance—thus attaining the genuine vocation of being human. In this way, the notion of comm/unity sheds light, from a Christian perspective, on human embodied existence as a pursuit of our common life in God. In scriptural tradition, I assert, this dynamic is symbolized by the image of feast that, at the same time, interconnects the aspects of human storiedness, corporeality, imagination, relationality, and the quest for transformation. Standing for both a power to resist all that is undesirable in the current order of things and the promise of a shared, just, and reconciled future with the other, feast represents a powerful image to account for human embodied existence—our common life in God.

On the whole, therefore, this book makes a case, from an ecumenical Christian perspective, for a theological anthropology and a missiology that are based on the essential significance of story, body, imagination, and relationality in order to understand what it means to be human vis-à-vis God, the other, and creation. Such an interpretation, moreover, enables seeking and pursuing a common life for the whole creation in the force field of God’s radical and transformative reign. To advance its argument, it engages contemporary culture, including cinema and, to a lesser extent, fiction and music.

This volume grows out of the research project Theological Anthropology in Ecumenical Perspective at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. Under the leadership of Prof. Ivana Noble and in collegial fellowship and cooperation with the other research team members, I have begun researching and writing about themes that represent the respective chapters of this book. My thanks goes to all of my colleagues for their support and intellectual stimulation.

I would also like to thank the people at Wipf and Stock Publishers for their professional and kind-hearted approach. A special word of appreciation goes to my editor, Charlie Collier, for his insightful comments and advice.

I am grateful to Benjamin Simon of the World Council of Churches for hosting me in his apartment at Petit-Bossey, Switzerland, in August 2021 and to Marie and Jiří Ort for letting me use their vacation house in Perálec, Czech Republic, in September 2021 and again in January 2022. A concentrated, creative, and enjoyable time spent at these two beautiful places significantly contributed toward completion of this book.

I am also thankful to my parents for introducing me to this embodied existence. And, as ever, my gratitude and love go to Ikuška, Sofi, and Dami, for showing me day by day that human embodied existence is characterized by intimacy, trust, joy, and hope.

Soli Deo gloria.

Pavol Bargár

Perálec

January 27, 2022 (International Holocaust Remembrance Day)

1

Story

Of Angels and Stories

In a 1987 film, Wings of Desire , the director Wim Wenders invites the viewer to enter the world of the Iron Curtain-torn Berlin. ¹ Originally, Wenders had intended to provide his film with a metaphysical justification of the story line according to which the infuriated God would decide to leave humankind to their fate after the Second World War. However, there were a handful of angels who would intercede for people, praying that God give the terrestrians yet another chance. This intercession would make God even angrier and result in God punishing the angels by sending them into exile to the war-stricken Berlin—without a possibility to either return to heaven or intervene in the course of events in the world. These fallen angels would be doomed to be eternal spectators of the earthly drama. ²

It is significant to note that the idea of either the infuriated God or angels as fallen celestial creatures does not feature in the film. Nevertheless, there are two other distinct moments implied by the paraphrased passage. First, Wings of Desire is characterized by a considerable transcendental vacuum. In other words, there is no explicit consideration of the concept of transcendent reality in the sense of God. In this respect, the heaven over Berlin is indeed empty.³ Or, to put it in the terminology that will be crucial to the argument of this chapter, God’s story with the world lacks its main author and protagonist.

Second, angels are here first and foremost—albeit not exclusively—introduced as isolated and disengaged observers. The focus in Wings of Desire rests upon two of them, Damiel and Cassiel. Detached from anything going on in the human world, they are mere spectators who make notes from their observations. Subsequently, they read these notes to each other. Being invisible to the human eye, they cannot directly influence the situations that they happen to be part of. For instance, they are not capable of grasping objects that belong to the human world; all they can do is to get hold of the form of a particular object (a rock, a pencil), while the thing itself remains as it is. Even though the picture suggests that angels might have, by the virtue of their presence, a certain role in comforting the desperate (e.g., the despondent man on the subway train who finds peace of mind after being touched by Damiel) or accompanying the dying (e.g., Damiel holding in his arms a motorcyclist who dies in a traffic accident), this capability seems to be rather scarce and considerably unreliable (e.g., Cassiel is not able to prevent a young man from committing suicide by jumping off a tall building).

The major turn of events in this film comes when Damiel tells his colleague, Cassiel, about his desire to become human. He is not any more interested in thinking in categories such as forever; he wants to experience for himself what it means here and now. As Damiel puts it, he does not yearn for great things (beget a child, plant a tree); he only wants to take his shoes off and move his toes or come home and feed the cat like Phil Marlow. However, the robust catalyst of Damiel’s desire to become human is Marion, a young trapeze artist. Marion represents Damiel’s human counterpart, providing a clear orientation for his desire. In a manner not dissimilar to that of God and God’s creation, Marion and Damiel yearn for their own story that would, at the same time, be the story of their match. Even though Marion is not aware of Damiel’s existence, she keeps searching for him as she subconsciously knows he is the one. And Damiel gives up eternity to pursue his own story. An angel becomes human, giving up his proverbial—though, as we have said, imaginary—wings to be able to give wings to his desire.

The emphasis on story is of central importance here. As Roger Cook points out, Damiel’s desire is not merely one for a human mode of existence. It is, first and foremost, the desire to participate in the human story, nay, to be able to create one’s own story with regard to both the future and the past.⁴ In this respect it is very illustrative to turn to another former angel, Peter Falk, a.k.a. Lieutenant Columbo, who features in the film as himself. Falk recollects the memories of his grandmother which is, in case of an angel, an obvious logical nonsense. And yet, even such a nonsense is immensely significant as it signifies the inherent human need to have one’s own—and complete—story. It furthermore shows the power of words, images, and imagination.⁵

The importance of one’s own integral story is also underlined by the formal aspect of Wings of Desire. The first part of the film consists of mutually unrelated, apparently haphazard, scenes in which angels observe people in ordinary situations of life. Absent is any coherent and unifying story line. The latter gradually emerges only after Damiel has become human, thus creating his own story. It is precisely because of the questions related to the centrality of individual human story in a quest for the meaning of life that Wenders’s film can be characterized as existentialist. Wings of Desire implies that the meaning of life is not a priori given; rather, one must discover it for oneself. However, the film does not slip into nihilism and despair. Meaning is introduced as readily available. Humans can pursue it by relating to fellow human beings, by encountering the other who is one’s neighbor.⁶ One needs the other/neighbor to be able to fully and authentically realize one’s own story, one’s human existence.

A question comes to mind of what role angels play in this process of the realization of human existence vis-à-vis the other. In this regard it is of crucial importance that the film makes it clear that children only are able to see angels; adults evidently do not possess this ability. While Cook makes note of this feature, he does not attempt to interpret it explicitly.⁷ Nevertheless, he indirectly suggests that the affinity between angels and children lies in the common unconscious existence in the world of the senses,⁸ where the world of the adults is characterized by creating one’s own story through words and images. For his part, Alexander Graf perceives a point of connection in the fact that both children and angels dwell in their own world of dreams.⁹ I, on the contrary, see a connecting link between children and angels in innocence that people lose as they grow older. Innocence is to be understood in the existential meaning of the word, that is, as a preliminary exemption from sin in the sense of alienation. In Wings of Desire, neither children nor angels experience—unlike adult human beings—alienation from the meaning of life. One of the characters in the film, old man Homer, says that if humankind loses its narrator, it will also lose its childhood. Here, childhood is regarded as unambiguously related to story that, in turn, implies the meaning of life. In the film, both children and angels represent beings in a prelapsarian stage; the consequences of existence in the incurvate in se stage do not bear on them yet (in the case of children) or are not applicable to them (in the case of angels). If one seeks to fully realize one’s humanity and experience a deep and authentic relationship with a fellow human being, one must be like a child. Both Marion and Damiel meet this requirement—she as a trapeze artist, a member of the circus community that is often seen by the mainstream society as a bunch of fools; he as a former angel who has not yet been corrupted by life in human society. Marion and Damiel find a way to each other, helping one another to pursue the meaning of life, thus transcending the boundaries of their finite existence. The final scene of the film captures Damiel reflecting on the moment of connection between him and Marion, between a man and a woman, as collateral for eternity: It happened once. Once, and therefore forever.

It is desire that leads Damiel to renounce his eternal and immutable existence, adopting the limitations and finitude of human life. Finitude/boundedness is what enables people to have their own stories and to pursue their humanity and meaning of life in relation to the other. And his own story and meaningful existence is what Damiel yearns for in Wings of Desire.¹⁰ However, desire is essential for the thesis of this chapter in yet another sense as I would like to argue that God has created the world and everything in it because God longs to share God’s story with creation, offering the latter an opportunity to co-create the story.

Of Humans and Stories

The previous discussion helps us, I believe, begin to see why story has emerged as an essential category not only in philosophy or literature and media studies but, since the 1970s, also in Christian theology.¹¹ When proposing that story itself creates a world of consciousness and the self is oriented to it, Stephen Crites asserts not only that story constitutes an inherent part of human existence but also that the narrative structure of human consciousness belongs to the realm of nature, thus, effectively, foregoing culture.¹² While I maintain that Crites’s point on the narrative structure of human consciousness is important, I, like Richard Kearney, see a gap between nature and narrative, between time suffered [and] time enacted and enunciated that distinguishes a merely biological life (zoe) from a truly human one (bios).¹³

Therefore, it is vital to postulate, together with Alasdair MacIntyre, story as an irreplaceable element for conceiving human identity when the self is perceived in terms of a narrative unity linking an individual’s entire life from cradle to grave.¹⁴ This point is also made by Charles Taylor, who