The following are excerpts from the article Paul’s Flesh: A Disabled Reading of Flesh/ Spirit Dualism by Kai D. Moore, followed by my comments on how this article by Moore relates to the affirmation of the flesh in early Mormonism:
Abstract
This article considers the Pauline construction of a “spiritual body”in 1 Corinthians 15 and his flesh/ spirit dualism more generally in light of Paul’s probable disability. I suggest that this rhetoric functioned as a strategy for Paul to claim social power in his social context by deemphasizing his physical presence, and thus reflects a negotiation with cultural patterns of disability abjection rather than a meaningful part of Christian teaching. Because of the active harm done by these dualistic constructions, however unintentional such an interpretation may have been on Paul’s part, liberative Christian theologies must reject this framing and work to integrate not just “body”and spirit but also flesh …
… The need to consider these undesirable aspects of bodies points us, perhaps, toward “flesh” rather than “body,” and yet particularly from a Christian perspective, if we are to consider the place of flesh in relation to God, we must at some point reckon with the work of Paul and his emphatic statements that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 15: 50) and “those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Rom. 8: 8). Most scholars agree that Paul is not attempting to construct a bodily ontology in this literature, nor even really talking about embodiment itself, and yet this flesh/spirit dualism endures in pervasive cultural and academic assumptions that flesh has no place in Christian thought.
I am intrigued by the suggestion of biblical interpreters through the years— most recently Amos Yong (2011) and Martin Albl (2007)— that Paul may also have lived with a condition that would make him disabled by today’s definition. …
… Interpreters have long debated the nature of the “physical infirmity” Paul mentions in Galatians 4: 13, usually assuming that it refers to the same cause as the “thorn in the flesh” of 2 Corinthians 12: 7 (Plummer, 1915: 351). Based on a few textual hints—“had it been possible, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me”(Gal. 4: 15), “See what large letters I make when I am writing with my own hand!”(Gal. 6: 11)—some have speculated that his condition affected his eyesight. Adela Yarbro Collins (2011), on the contrary, draws on the research of Max Krenkel in order to argue that Paul’s “thorn” was epilepsy or another condition which involved seizures (pp. 173–176). Amos Yong (2011) considers the possibility of Paul’s disablement in some depth, using a fairly conservative definition of disability, and ultimately concludes that Paul was “physically troubled” in some way for extended periods of his life, and perhaps permanently (pp. 83–87).
But beyond the specific details of his embodiment, I am most interested in the way Paul speaks of his communities’ reactions to his body: “though my condition put you to the test, you did not scorn or despise me”(Gal. 4: 14), “They say, ‘His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible’”(2 Cor. 10: 10). He speaks defensively at times (particularly in the Corinthian correspondence) of his right to claim authority in spite of his perceived bodily weakness, contradicting the presumptions of the Greek rhetorical tradition which closely linked a strong physical presence with social power and influence (Martin, 1995: 53–55). As Yong (2011) puts it, “if Paul did have to deal with physical impairment or disability, . . . that isn’t only an individualized or biomedical experience but also a social one, which no doubt threatened to stigmatize and ostracize Paul,” as these texts suggest (p. 88). While we do not have a clear picture in the scriptural sources of what Paul’s body might have looked like or what his particular impairments might have been, it seems clear that Paul, at least in certain contexts, experienced the shape or functions of his body as socially stigmatized and therefore culturally disabled.
… Dale Martin (1995) summarizes the way Paul navigates that relationship:
For both Paul and his ideological opponents at Corinth, the body is a microcosm structured as a continuous physiological hierarchy . . . [H] e insists on the future resurrection of the body, thereby denying the lowly status attributed to the body by Greco-Roman elite culture. At the same time he admits that the resurrected body will have to be thoroughly reconstituted so as to be able to rise from the earth to a new luminous home in the heavens. The eschatological body must be one without earth, flesh, blood, or even psyche (soul). (p. 135)
He capitulates to the educated Greek philosophical belief that the stuff of the earth, with its low status, can never hope to reach the high status of the celestial elements (Martin, 1995: 113– 114 ), and so concedes that the “body” which will be resurrected is stripped of flesh and blood as well as soul, and is constituted only of the lighter element of spirit (Martin, 1995: 128). He does not challenge the division of creation into substances of higher and lower status, nor the underlying assumption that it is the weakness and mortality of the body— precisely its nature as unpredictable and not entirely under conscious control— which mark it as low status. In this way, he creates an entirely new concept of the “spiritual body” (sōma pneumatikon), made up entirely of the most honorable substance and yet still somehow considered a “body”—introducing the conceptual possibility of a body entirely free from the realm of death, illness, or pain.
I suggest that Paul’s “spiritual body” reflects the way that Paul found social power in the Greco-Roman context—through his spiritual presence—and then used the Christian gospel to articulate an eschatological body which supported his claims to authority. That is, because his audiences in Rome and in Corinth devalued the weakness of his physical body, he emphasized rhetorical mastery and spiritual strength in the present life, and spirit to the exclusion of all other aspects of the body in the resurrection life—even conceding to the Greek cosmology that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” The weakness of Paul’s own flesh was devalued in his society, and rather than challenging the cultural worship of strength and wholeness, he shifted the theological emphasis from the visible to the invisible, from an aspect in which he was “weak” to one where he was “strong,” in the process redefining “bodies” entirely for the Christian framework. As Arthur Dewey and Anna Miller (2017) put it, Paul depicts all earthly, physical bodies as essentially impaired—and therefore rightly marked negatively—and “constructs resurrection as a ‘cure’” (p. 398) which will raise them as “perfectly abled” spiritual bodies (p. 382).
… Paul then used his embodiment as a rhetorical device, emphasizing God’s power which is “made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12: 9)—not challenging the idea that his body represented shame or low status, but rather, shifting the focus from his present weakness to his (and God’s) future power. In this world, Paul’s body was a source of conflict and dishonor. Is it any surprise that he might envision an eschaton in which his body was freed not only from what caused him pain but also from what marked his low status?
… I do not begrudge Paul in his insistence that his bodily weakness was not the only thing that mattered about him, nor even the most important thing. But in the rhetorical vigor of his attempts to throw the focus off his own flesh, Paul set the stage for centuries of theological hatred of flesh …
… Taking the book of Romans (or even the Pauline corpus) by itself, the word “flesh” (sarx) would seem to have very little to do with the human body. Rather it describes a way of life that is opposed to God’s way, a tendency toward sin, an internal struggle, “a universal symbol for the crippling competition for honor that distorts every human endeavor,” as Robert Jewett tellingly puts it (Jewett, 2007: 483). … In Paul, however, about half of his uses carry some sort of negative tone, often of resistance to God or of susceptibility to sin (Erickson, 1993: 305). For him, flesh became a doctrinal shorthand for the temptation to seek glory in the things of this world. …
… “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” (Gal. 5: 17).
… Paul may not have intended to make a claim about the nature of human bodies, but by choosing such an inescapably bodily term and linking it with concepts of mortality, weakness, and destructibility, as well as passion and desire, he succeeded in constructing Christian bodies as inherently conflicted and divided, urging believers to crucify their own flesh and distrust its urges. He may not have meant for literal human flesh to be implicated when he tied sarx so closely with “the law of sin,” but when his rhetorical use is so consistent that the New International Version, for instance, frequently translates sarx and related forms as “sinful (human) nature” (Kohlenberger et al., 1997: 680– 681), it is hardly a surprise that so many have read in Paul a simplistic equation of flesh = sin. …
… I have argued that Paul’s new construction of the “spiritual body” in 1 Corinthians 15, read through the lens of Paul’s own disability, represents something of a theological coping mechanism for life in a society which valued strength and physical presence so highly. But this imagined ideal body, stripped of the flesh which was a source of Paul’s dishonor, also appears throughout the Pauline literature as the implied eschatological destination of “life according to the spirit,” strictly opposed to all things of the flesh. The rhetorical opposition of “flesh” and “spirit” bears the marks of Paul’s own search for social power by the very words he chose to represent the old life in the world as distinct from the new life in Christ, which was then carried into the realm of morality by his apocalyptic fervor. Before Paul got to the word sarx, it seems to have been a fairly neutral word: just another aspect of bodies. But if Paul experienced his own body as a source of shame and discrimination, trying to throw the focus off his own flesh by creating the possibility of a future life without physical bodies at all—clearly without disability—may have been an appealing option for a passionate new convert.
… Two thousand years later, when we don’t feel the apocalyptic expectation quite so closely on the horizon, language about eschatological bodies has come to function in large part to pass judgment on our present bodies and lives. Paul gave us vocabulary to imagine the possibility of living outside of the vulnerability and malleability of flesh, and now—with the help of all these years of interpretation, misplaced emphasis, and the (almost infinite) capacity of humans to oppress one another—for some, his words have come to function less as a liberatory vision and more as condemnation …
… One of the enduring challenges for the Christian tradition has been reconciling the essential goodness of our bodies as God’s creations …
… It seems that Paul did not intend his role in this process, but he succeeded in providing the framework which would define “flesh” as the lusty, uncontrolled, shameful aspects of bodies, in contrast to the ethereal qualities of “spirit” which suddenly emerged as a future for bodies themselves. That is, in constructing the notion of a “spiritual body,” along with the possibility of suppressing the influence of “flesh,” Paul’s words created the possibility for what Mayra Rivera (2015) calls a “dream of glorious bodies freed from the weight of earthy substances and the menace of death” (p. 41). …
… The category of flesh as somehow different from “body” has functioned discursively for centuries to locate the flux and vulnerability of human bodies in something other than embodiment itself, allowing Christian thought to imagine primordial bodies with neither desire nor suffering, and eschatological bodies freed from all traces of earthiness (e.g. Robinson, 1977: 34). …
… I have argued in this article that the vehemence with which Paul differentiated and opposed flesh from spirit bears the marks, not only of the hierarchy of substances in the Greco-Roman context, but also of his own personal search for meaning and authority. While, in his time, he may have felt the need to downplay the importance of his own fleshly body, in the very different context of our own day, we have the opportunity to ask what purpose this construct now serves: whether it adds anything to our theological reflection, or whether it has outlived its usefulness for the project of understanding Christian bodies.
In contrast, Joseph Smith postponed the eschatological "End Times" until he was at least 85 years old. Rather than equate flesh with sinfulness Smith’s scriptures argue that Adam fell that mankind might have joy and in a letter to Nancy Rigdon, Smith explained that God is more liberal in his views. He divinized flesh as spirit matter and God the Father himself has a body of flesh and bone. Smith intended the Book of Mormon to be published together with the New Testament, likely because of the subtle shift in it's consciousness through its affirmation of the body and strong men of stature who utilized their masculine strength and power to defend their families, their country and democracy. Parley P. Pratt in turn forcefully rejected this idea of depraved lusty bodies in need of becoming ethereal bodies in his essay Intelligence and Affection (see excerpt here) found in the pamphlet An appeal to the inhabitants of the State of New York : Letter to Queen Victoria. As I argued in The Secret Doctrine of God
The article by Kai D. Moore quoted above, while clearly not written by a Mormon, goes on before the conclusion to basically present a solution to the anti-body problem, which solution is the same solution found in original 1840s Mormonism, as the writer states:
A re-evaluation and a reclamation of the flesh are essential for theological anthropology. Unless we can begin to imagine human bodies as flesh, simultaneously infused with spirit, we will be unable to reconcile the sometimes-frustrating reality of those bodies with their centrality to personal identity …
This is basically the vision of Nauvoo era Mormonism, the re-evaluation and a reclamation of the flesh.
