Give us today our daily bread: towards a phenomenological theology of embodied finitude

ABSTRACT

In order to develop a phenomenological theology of embodied finitude, I first turn to the not-uncontroversial concept of kenosis. Drawing on the kenosis hymn in Philippians 2, as well as feminist and Eastern Orthodox thought, I argue for a relational understanding of kenosis that does not correspond to the conventional ‘self-emptying’ of kenotic theology. This is, in part, due to the experience of embodiment, which I turn to in my second section. Drawing upon phenomenological resources to articulate the nature of the embodiment as flesh, I argue that the intersubjective and interrelated constitution of the flesh grounds an understanding of kenosis and begins to articulate what embodied finitude is. I bring into this conversation the notion of ‘deep incarnation’, which reveals one of the depths of finitude: bodily need. In my final section, I explicate a reading of the Lord’s Prayer as part of a spirituality that embraces embodied finitude and incarnate need. Here, I distinguish between need and desire, with relational kenosis aiming at plerosis, that is, human flourishing as love.

KEYWORDS:

• Finitude
• deep incarnation
• embodiment
• phenomenology
• kenosis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This is covered in most commentaries, e.g. Sacra Pagina: Philippians and Philemon.

2 I am mindful of Willie James Jennings’ critique of theological education and the anthropology it presupposes in his After Whiteness (Jennings 2020). Jennings is taking on the theological anthropological model that attempts to become ‘master of the house’, self-defining and constituting.

3 This is the soteriological conception of deification. For an interesting exploration of it, see the collection of Orthodox essays on God and creation, Towards an Ecology of Transfiguration.

4 Translated in the NRSV: ‘Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus’.

5 This is the language that Aristotle uses in the De Anima, which has influenced much of Christian thought. However, John Zizioulas highlights how this is not the goal for the Christian in his work, Otherness and Communion.

6 See Linn Marie Tonstad’s fantastic essay in Suffering and the Christian Life, ‘On Vulnerability’, pp. 175–188 where she questions the reaction to the Enlightenment’s formulation of subjectivity through emphases on vulnerability.

7 For a good survey of these themes, see Rowan Williams’ Looking East in Winter, especially chapters two and three on embodiment and on kenosis respectively. I take up this theme again in my conclusion below.

8 This kind of incarnational embodiment does not imply that our bodies are not carnate, but rather than we, through the inscription of a deeply dualist society, often live as if we were not. Incarnational embodiment is an attempt to live more carnately.

9 For examples, see Jean-Luc Nancy, Corpus (Nancy 2008), and Michel Henry, Incarnation (Henry 2015).

10 Mitdasein is ‘being-with’, an articulation in his analytic of Dasein (being-there) that ontologically implicates an other in Dasein’s existence.

11 For example, Arthur Peacocke, ‘The Cost of New Life’, in The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis.

12 It is here that one could argue desire originates, not in a sense of lack but as a fundamental capacity of the absolute flesh’s autoaffectivity.

13 Heidegger, Being and Time, §38 and §53. While there is not space to explore this more fully from a Heideggeran perspective, his terminology is useful in recognising that living in our flesh is possible in multiple ways. Another interesting dialogue partner to develop this would be Jean-Paul Sartre and his concept of ‘bad faith’. There may be consequences to hamartiology that could be drawn from here.

14 For an exploration of this, see Peteet (2011).

15 This desire for the infinite has been expounded by many theologians, but perhaps none so compellingly as Gregory of Nyssa. See his homilies on the Song of Songs for a good introduction to this theme (Gregory of Nyssa 2012).

16 New Revised Standard Version. This is also the opening principle of the Third Order Society of St. Francis (TSSF Manual 2020).

17 This is Paul Fiddes’ argument in ‘Creation out of Love’, in The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis.

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Jeremy Heuslein

Jeremy Heuslein Originally from the United States, Jeremy Heuslein came to the United Kingdom via a decade in Belgium, where he studied philosophy and phenomenology at KU Leuven, researching Aristotle’s understanding of perception (MA), embodied phenomenology and its use in the cognitive science theory of the ‘extended mind’, (MPhil), and the experience of torture and its implications on structures of subjectivity (PhD). He has trained for ordination since September 2020 at Ripon College Cuddesdon and from June 2023 will be ordained and serve his curacy post in South Wales with the Diocese of Llandaff. His research interests include the intersection of phenomenology and theology (particularly in the French academy), hermeneutics, body theology, and the phenomenology of violence.