Fr. John Behr, The Mystery of Christ: The life in the body and epilogue

This is part three and the conclusion of a review. See here for part one and here for part two.

In his final chapter, Fr. John Behr applies the method of seeing all things through the perspective (the hypothesis or starting point) of the Passion of Christ on to the life of the individual believer in the body. In the church's classic teaching, Christ recapitulated- assumed, took into Himself- all of humanity in His Incarnation and Passion, and we in turn are to recapitulate His life. Living the life of Christ in our body is to live the perfect human life. What does this look like?

Fr. John points to St. Athanasius' On The Incarnation as a key source for theoretical understanding on this, but then to St. Athanasius' Life of St. Antony as this theory shown in practice. St. Antony (icon above) is presented as an example of one who has so assumed Christ, that he can be seen to be the continuation of Christ's life in a "normal" human existence. The text emphasizes that Antony was not a superhuman, that the presence of Christ was not felt in him as something other than human, but as a human being as he ought to be. Particularly notable is that he was neither insensible to natural human emotions and bodily needs or motions, nor was he controlled by them- his was a life of perfect balance, the vision of God ruling the life on earth rather than vice versa: "He maintained utter equilibrium, like one guided by the logos and steadfast in that which accords with nature."

In discussing the way we capitulate the life of Christ in our bodies, Fr. Behr pays particular attention to the confusion over the Christian attitude towards the human body and the material world in general. In both the Scriptures and the writings of the fathers, the body or flesh is portrayed in seemingly contradictory terms: On the one hand as a glorious creation and helper in our salvation, on the other hand as unruly and an enemy to be subjugated. Fr. Behr explains that what is spoken of when the body is called an enemy is the body as regarded by a diseased mind, the body made an idol. The problem is not the body in itself, which was created by God and is good, but an "evil husbandry of the mind" over the body. He emphasizes, "If one does not recognize that the struggle is ultimately with one's own perceptions, then one is left waging war on one's own nature." That is in fact what some outside observers and even some Christians who haven't been rightly taught perceive in these Scriptures and early Christian teaching. Fr. Behr underlines that Christ came to fight in and on behalf of the human body, and it is in our body that we seek to put on Christ. The body participates in the soul's salvation and vice versa; it is not just coming along for the ride or awaiting destruction while we continue on as disembodied creatures.

Fr. Behr then provides brief examples of contrasts between "good husbandry" and "evil husbandry" of the mind over the body. While eating and enjoyment of it is natural, gluttony can pervert this: "Gluttony is a false opinion about the way things are: 'Gluttony is hypocrisy of the stomach. Filled, it moans about scarcity...' " (Here quoting St. John Climacus.) Sex is given to us primarily for procreation, but can also be a ground for sanctification. Again quoting St. John Climacus: "I have watched impure souls mad for physical love but turning what they know of such love into a reason for repentance and transferring that same capacity for love to the Lord..."

This ordering of the body's impulses has been described in Orthodox spirituality as apatheia or detachment. Fr. John explains that "it connotes not repression but reorientation, not inhibition but freedom; having overcome the passions, we are free to be our true selves, free to love others, free to love God." (+Kallistos Ware) Such ordering is not accomplished with severity or austerity, still less with judgmentalism, but by remaining "open and pliable" to the activity of God within oneself. It is ultimately not we who form Christ in ourselves but Christ who does so. Lest it be said that Orthodoxy does not preach grace!

Finally, Fr. Behr brings the book back around to its starting place, to his main goal, which was to strip back some of modernity's constraints around our understanding of the gospel and the Christian life. The picture he paints- in this epilogue literally offering diagrams which I found helpful even though as a former Campus Crusader they initially made me nervous!- is that the Cross is literally the starting point of the whole universe. It is in the Cross that we see the history of humanity not in parallel terms to God's part in "salvation history," with arrows going back and forth between parallel lines (reminiscent to me of both dispensationalism and Calvinism), but as a single trajectory beginning at the Cross. The Cross is not only the restoration of creation, it in fact can be seen as its starting point.

I am reminded of St. Ephrem the Syrian's poem The Pearl, where he warns against the soul's wish to plumb the depths of the Trinity, as it is more than enough to content oneself with contemplation of God the Son. This seems to me precisely what Fr. John is calling us to: To regain the perspective the early church had when they considered Christ's Passion in light of the Scriptures. We have been taught to preoccupy ourselves with historical-critical and rationalistic questions and approaches, and to "what if's." They were caught up in a vision of Christ that filled their whole consciousness. Christ the complete image of God, the Alpha and Omega, through Whom we know all that we can know of God and humanity, in Whose Life we become the full human we were created to be, in Whom we, as St. Athanasius taught, become gods.