"And You, By the Way, Are a Heretic!"

Christopher West spoke just outside of St. Louis earlier this week, and I am incapable of summarizing in a word, a sentence, or a post. So my three loyal readers and their compatriots will either have to put up with at least a few posts on the talks, or else ignore them pleasantly and wait until I get to other parts of life.

For those who don't know, Christopher West talks on Theology of the Body. He calls it a "revolutionary" teaching of John Paul II, but it really finds its base in the Catholic theology of centuries. (JPII presented it in 129 lectures during the beginning of his pontificate.) It presents a theology (or religious philosophy) about the meaning, purpose, and experience of our bodies and often focuses on sexuality, though the scope of Theology of the Body is much larger than sex.

I want to start with the idea that fascinates me the most. Christopher West spent the first night convincing us of the embodiedness of the human person. You see, human beings are not spiritual beings in temporary physical bodies, or physical beings with a spiritual nature. We are physical and spiritual intertwined. The two together make up what it means to be human. He gave the example of a swirly ice cream cone : it is not chocolate, it is not vanilla, it is both together, and they cannot be separated if it will remain a swirly cone.

We call the separation of the two death. Christopher pointed out that in the Creed we state, "We believe in the... resurrection of the body..." Death, the severed state of body and soul, won't last forever. Heaven exists in a physical state as well as a spiritual one. Why else do we have the shining example of Christ's glorified body after the Resurrection?

His presentation of Theology of the Body hinges on this truth. If we are body and spirit, we live out our calling by living with both the body and the spirit. The Church, and Christians in general, can focus too much on the spiritual and forget that we live out our divine calling by living as embodied persons, men and women who are created in the image and likeness of God.

Christopher also explained that our existence as embodied spirits distinguishes us from the angels. "Next time someone calls you an angel," he said, "say, 'I am not! I am an embodied spirit, and you, by the way, are a heretic!'"