Read on Twitter
There is a tendency to emphasize our spiritual goods over and against our physical goods in Christian thinking. That all that matters is eternity so all that matters is spiritual things. Im gonna thread this out because it betrays bad christology and bad anthropology...
Bad christology. There is the fact that Jesus becomes flesh. That the work of salvation happens in creation: in matter, time, and spirit. In the resurrection, Jesus does have a spiritualized body, but it’s still a body in the full sense of the word, and this is achieved...
By virtue of his humanity united to his divinity. In Jesus there is no competition between the human and divine. Though the divine is higher obviously, it does not annul or destroy the human. This means that there is an affirmation about creation at work in Christ...
That says: creation is the place where our eternal goals are worked out in fear and trembling. To say “the eternal is all that matters” betrays a competitive view of nature and grace and sees creation as fundamentally lacking essential instrumentality in the work of salvation
This brings us to anthropology which follows easily from Christology. In the view “the eternal is all that matters” it seems to betray the importance of the body. That the eternal almost suffocates the created nature of man and his embodiedness.
We so often forget the doctrine of the resurrection of the body at the end of time, and that we too will be raised up in Christ. Our eternal goal is directly tied to the dignity of the body because matter, time, and spirit are the tools by which our eternal goal is achieved.
So often lately people put our spiritual goals as the only things that matter to the neglect of the common good owed our neighbour, the importance of making right decisions for their sake too, etc. There is a competition between health and eternity that’s unhealthy
Yes. Eternal goals are the most important. But they’re achieved in and through our createdness, our being in flesh, in time. God does not bypass creation to bring us to him but works through it.
And this brings me to the last point. Catholics have been impoverished in the loss of the cosmological vision of reality. Because the truth is we are created to share in the redemption of the whole cosmos with Christ. We are his body he uses to redeem everything...
Because the eternal and the temporal are meant to be brought together once again. They are not in competition, but the temporal is the means by which eternity breaks through to draw the two back together again.
But this can only happen through the Church, the Body of Christ, which is a sign of what the whole cosmos is to be. We are to bring the whole universe with us to the throne of the Father in Christ.
(Hey @Uncouth_Bard: I did a thread. It’s been a while)
I also think @SrHelenaBurns will appreciate this.
