Body-symbols and social reality: Resurrection, incarnation and asceticism in early Christianity

Mary Douglas has invited historians of religion to test her hypothesis about the social meaning of body symbols. Her view that body symbolism always points in the direction of social concerns and that efforts to separate body and spirit indicate sentiments of revolt and alienation has proved fruitful in several areas. Of course there is nothing particularly novel in the proposal that the body can be seen as a symbol of wider realities. The Stoics spoke of the universe as a body; Paul could describe individual Christian congregations as a body; and Priscillian referred to the human body in depreciating terms as a figura mundi. Victor Turner has shown that the body symbols of the Ndembu in Zambia are part of a wider pattern which uses ‘an aspect of human physiology as a model for social, cosmic and religious ideas and processes’, including, he adds, ‘the human body as] … a microcosm of the universe,’⁵⁷ There is even a considerable literature on the subject.⁵⁸ Indeed, one cannot help but be struck by the fact that with the great abundance of work devoted to body symbols in general, so little has been done with early Christianity.What distinguishes Douglas from other theoreticians of body symbolism is her Durkheimian orientation. By taking seriously the social dimension of body symbols and by positing the revolutionary character of symbols which separate body and spirit, she is able to uncover latent dimensions of doctrinal controversy and to restore flesh to the dry bones of theological debate. In her own preliminary studies, she has limited herself to one symbol, i.e. incarnation, and one controversy, i.e. the Arian. In extending her initiative to other symbols and controversies, I have proceeded on the assumption that body symbols of different sorts should reflect the same condensed message about society. I would argue that this effort has been largely successful. Expectations of imminent resurrection or views of the resurrection which deny the physical aspect are regularly associated in early Christianity with separatist-sectarian behaviour generally. The recession of hopes for an imminent resurrection accompanied the transition of Christianity from sect to church. Conversely, and this would warrant further study, subsequent sectarian movements within Christianity seem to be accompanied by a return of hopes for physical resurrection. Particular sorts of sectarianism, especially those which stress individualism and spiritualism, are prone to view the resurrection in other than physical terms. Even the mainstream of Christianity refused to abandon altogether the doctrine of a future resurrection. Orthodox believers could always point to the denial of resurrection as an unmistakable signpost of heresy. At one level we may treat this doctrinal survival as little more than a memory of Christianity's sectarian pedigree, as a vaguely disquieting memory. At another level, however, its very survival, against heavy odds, may also be seen as a permanent symbolic indicator of Christianity's ultimate refusal to identify itself completely with the secular order. Beyond this, the survival of belief in resurrection has meant the persistence of a latent symbol of protest, alienation and transformation. For in the final analysis, it is not the case that symbols merely reflect social reality. As symbols, they also possess the power to shape it.In this observation lies perhaps an explanation for the fact that our effort has not been fully successful. We have not found it to be true in every case that statements of protest in one symbolic medium, say, asceticism, will inevitably be replicated in other media, say, incarnation and resurrection. This does occur often enough to be interesting and more than coincidental. The Testimony of Truth from Nag Hammadi is a paradigm case. Paul's Corinthians, Paul himself and Arius come close. The ascetics of Egypt are the most interesting ‘deviants’. The connection between their asceticism and the message of alienation and protest is clear. Their views of the resurrection have not been much studied, but in view of the symbolic function of their bodies and their view of ascetic practice as a means of restoring the natural state of Eden, it is not too much to suggest that their conception of resurrection would have emphasized the restored and purified nature of the resurrection body in contrast to the orthodox view of the absolute identity of that body with the present physical one. As for their views of the incarnation, there is some evidence of leanings in this direction. While those who held to docetic christologies generally favoured asceticism, the reverse was not always true. Part of the reason for the absence of docetic views of the incarnation among the ascetics—assuming, of course, that they should have been docetists—is that they say so little about doctrines of any kind. Part may also be due to the orthodoxy of those who wrote about the monks. Part may be due to the fact that the primary target of ascetic protest was not the physical universe, or matter as such, or even the world of social and political reality, but rather the church in and of the world—a differentiated and thus moderated protest. But part may also be due to a more or less conscious decision to draw a line between expressions of alienation, so to speak, a symbolic quid pro quo. The quid was the recognition by the church at large that ascetic piety could not be proscribed by the successor generations of the martyrs. The pro quo would then take the form of doctrinal orthodoxy. Thus the absence of docetic christologies among the ascetics would result not just from the imposition of episcopal authority but from the power of doctrine to shape reality.Body symbols thus provide us with a new thread for tracing the transformation of Christianity from an obscure cluster of sects in Palestine to an institution of unparalleled spiritual and political power in the Roman empire. Of course, not everyone accepted this transformation as an act of divine providence. Some reacted by denying that God had taken on a human body in the person of Jesus; others tortured their bodies; and from time to time in succeeding centuries still others gathered in small communities to await the resurrection of the body and with it the birth of a new world.