Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200 - 1336
Bynum (Caroline)
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Inside Cover Blurb

  1. In their studies of Christian visions of the afterlife1 and of apocalypse, religious historians have concentrated almost exclusively on the fate of the soul.
  2. But in the medieval period the fate of the body in resurrection posed troubling questions:
    • If my body is resurrected, which of the many possible bodies will return - the child, the young adult, or the old woman?;
    • Or, if my body is dissolved in the grave, in what form will it come back?
  3. In The Resurrection of the Body Caroline Bynum forges a new path of historical inquiry by studying the notion of bodily resurrection in the ancient and medieval West against the background of persecution and conversion, social hierarchy, burial practices, and the cult of saints.
  4. Examining those periods between the late second and fourteenth centuries in which discussions of the body were central to Western conceptions of death and resurrection, she suggests that the attitudes toward the body emerging from these discussions still undergird our modern conceptions of personal identity and the individual.
  5. Bynum describes how Christian thinkers clung to a very literal notion of resurrection, despite repeated attempts by some theologians and philosophers to spiritualise the idea. Focussing on the metaphors and examples used in theological and philosophical discourse and on artistic depictions of saints, death, and resurrection, Bynum connects the Western obsession with bodily return to a deep-seated fear of biological process and a tendency to locate identity and individuality in the body.
  6. Of particular interest is the imaginative religious imagery, often bizarre to modern eyes, which emerged during medieval times. Bynum has collected 35 examples of such imagery, which illuminates her discussion of bodily resurrection.
  7. With this detailed study of theology, piety, and social history, Bynum writes a new chapter in the history of the body and challenges our views on gender, social hierarchy and difference.
Book Comment

Columbia University Press; 1995. Hardback.


"Bynum (Caroline) - Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity: Preface + Introduction - Seed Images, Ancient and Modern"

Source: Bynum (Caroline) - Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200 - 1336, Preface/Introduction


For a partially-completed file-note, Click here for Note.

Write-up1 (as at 29/12/2019 12:57:36): Bynum - Resurrection of the Body (Preface + Introduction)

This write-up is a review of "Bynum (Caroline) - Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity: Preface + Introduction - Seed Images, Ancient and Modern". Note – these comments are not intended as a complete abstract; they just pick out items I found interesting and worthy of further consideration in the light of my research.

Preface

p. xvi
  1. New concepts can be elaborated in response to intellectual deficiencies in old ones.
  2. Ideas are sometimes elaborated or betrayed by the metaphors that clothe them.
  3. Social and religious context of theology and philosophy: shown by the examples, limiting cases and images used by polemicists and theologians.
  4. Start from the texts themselves rather than imposing a modern context.

p. xvii
  1. The book is about body, not soul or eschatology.

p. xviii
  1. Shift of focus to purgatory and the moment of death, rather than the end of the world.
  2. Mediaeval Christianity is not dualistic, so why focus on the body to the exclusion of the soul? The understanding of the self is as a psychosomatic unity. Because the body rather than the soul raised philosophical questions of identity and personhood.


Introduction

p. 2
  1. Resurrection of the body is always associated with the divine power to create and re-create.
  2. Sameness as numerical identity2, retained through spatiotemporal continuity.

p. 3
  1. Sameness as similarity: materially and formally the same, with the same bits arranged in the same way.
  2. Reference to Bynum’s essay “Material Continuity …”. Note that the high middle ages recognise material continuity less than earlier or modern discussions. Yet mostly, embodiment is required for personhood.
  3. Refernce to Brown, “Resurrection”.
  4. The seed as the oldest Christian metaphor for the resurrection of the body. 1 Corinthians 15: 21-54. Sameness is in the sense of numerical identity3, not of appearance. The question: How do the dead rise (with what sort of body)? Bare grain dies; it’s not the body that shall be; all flesh is not the same flesh; there are earthly and heavenly bodies, and exemplars of the latter “differ in glory”. Corruption versus incorruption, dishonour versus glory, weakness versus power, natural versus spiritual. Anything corruptible cannot inherit the kingdom of God. The raising of the dead and the “changing” of those alive at Christ’s return. Mortal putting on immortality.

p. 4
  1. Suggestion that these verses are “enigmatic” when taken with Romans 6-8 (resurrection occurred at Baptism – “rebirth of embodied person”) and 2 Corinthians 5:1-10, which (Bynum alleges) may be taken to mean we discard body when taking up our heavenly dwelling: this is incorrect exegesis of the “away from the body and at home with the Lord” passage, however. Paul claims that we don’t want to be “unclothed” but “clothed with our heavenly dwelling”, which will be the resurrection body. “The” body is “this” body, not any body.
  2. Accounts of Jesus resurrection follow the same spectrum – exaggeratedly physicalist4 (eating fish, Thomas instructed to touch) and exaggeratedly spiritualist (passing through closed doors, unrecognisable, “don’t touch me”).

p. 5
  1. Oscar Cullman – NT draws on Jewish ideas of resurrection of the person rather than alien imported Greek ideas of the immortality of the soul. 1 Corinthians 15 as “redemption of the person as a psychosomatic unity”.
  2. Cullman’s distinction is between
    • Seeing the human being as a person who dies (and then sleeps) until an end time and
    • Seeing the human being as a spirit (a nonmaterial and nondying element) housed in physicality.
    Bynum states that the high mediaeval view is neither of these alternatives.
  3. Suggestion that Cullman underestimates the diversity of Jewish thought.
  4. Counter-suggestion that for Paul soma doesn’t mean “body” but “self”, “community” or “disembodied person” – a view rejected by Robert Gundry who shows Paul uses soma to mean “morally neutral physical body” and not just “person”.
  5. 20th century philosophy rejected dualism. References to "Perry (John) - A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality" and "Shoemaker (Sydney) & Swinburne (Richard) - Personal Identity". This supports Cullman. Support for Cullman in accepting that the Pauline soma means “person” not “body”, and is related to Heb. nepheesh, “individual” (so, not “soul” as I’d thought, though there’s the contention that nephesh is something one is rather than has).
  6. Reference to "Penelhum (Terence), Ed. - Immortality".

p. 6

To be continued5 …



In-Page Footnotes ("Bynum (Caroline) - Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity: Preface + Introduction - Seed Images, Ancient and Modern")

Footnote 1:
  • This is the write-up as it was when this Abstract was last output, with text as at the timestamp indicated (29/12/2019 12:57:36).
  • Link to Latest Write-Up Note.


"Bynum (Caroline) - Resurrection and Martydom: The Decades Around 200"

Source: Bynum (Caroline) - Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200 - 1336, Chapter 1


Sections
  1. Early metaphors for Resurrection: Fertility and Repetition
  2. The Second Century: Organic Metaphors and Material Continuity
  3. Irenaeus and Tertullian: The Paradox of Continuity and Change
  4. Martyrdom
  5. Burial Practices


"Bynum (Caroline) - Resurrection, Relic Cult, and Acseticism: The Debates of 400 and Their Background"

Source: Bynum (Caroline) - Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200 - 1336, Chapter 2


Sections
  1. The Legacy of the Second Century
  2. Origen and Methodius: The Seed versus the Statue1
  3. Aphrahat, Ephraim, and Cyril of Jerusalem: Immutable Particles in Process
  4. Gregory of Nyssa: Survival, Flux, and the Fear of Decay
  5. Jerome and the Origenist Controversy: The Issue of Bodily Integrity
  6. Augustine and the Reassembled Statue2: The Background to the Middle Ages
  7. Relic Cult
  8. Asceticism, the Church and the World


"Bynum (Caroline) - Reassemblage and Regurgitation: Ideas of Bodily Resurrection in Early Scholasticism"

Source: Bynum (Caroline) - Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200 - 1336, Chapter 3


Sections
  1. Herrad of Hohenbourg: An Introduction to Twelfth-Century Art and Theology
  2. A Scholastic Consensus: The Reassemblage and Dowering of the Body
  3. Honorius Augustodunensis and John Scotus Erigena: An Alternative Tradition?


"Bynum (Caroline) - Psychosomatic Persons and Reclothed Skeletons: Images of Resurrection in Spiritual Writing and Iconography"

Source: Bynum (Caroline) - Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200 - 1336, Chapter 4


Sections
  1. Hildegard of Bingen: The Greening of Person and the Body as Dust
  2. Cistercian Writings: Images of First and Second Resurrection
  3. Peter the Venerable and the Pauline Seed
  4. Otto of Freising’s Uneasy Synthesis: Resurrection “Clothed in a Double Mantle ..”
  5. The Iconography of the General Resurrection: Devouring and Regurgitation of Fragments and Bones


"Bynum (Caroline) - Resurrection, Heresy, and Burial ad Sanctos"

Source: Bynum (Caroline) - Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200 - 1336, Chapter 5


Sections
  1. Fragmentation and Burial Practices
  2. Hierarchy, Heresy and Fear of Decay
  3. Miracles


"Bynum (Caroline) - Resurrection, Hylomorphism, and Abundantia: Scholastic Debates in the Thirteenth Century"

Source: Bynum (Caroline) - Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200 - 1336, Chapter 6


Sections
  1. The Discourse of High Scholasticism: The Rejection of Statues and Seeds
  2. Bonaventure and the Ambivalence of Desire
  3. Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, and Giles of Rome: Resurrection, Hylomorphism1, and Formal Identity
  4. The Condemnations of 1277 and the Materialist Reaction


"Bynum (Caroline) - Somatomorphic Soul and Visio Dei: The Beatific Vision Controversy and Its Background"

Source: Bynum (Caroline) - Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200 - 1336, Chapter 7


Sections
  1. Purgatory
  2. The Controversy over the Beatific Vision
  3. Otherworld Journeys and the Divine Comedy
  4. The Hagiography and Iconography of Wholeness


"Bynum (Caroline) - Fragmentation and Ecstasy: The Thirteenth-Century Context"

Source: Bynum (Caroline) - Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200 - 1336, Chapter 8


Sections
  1. The Practice of Bodily Partition
  2. Devotional Literature: Body as Locus of Experience and as a Friend
  3. Women Mystics and the Triumph of Desire
  4. Epilogue


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  2. Mauve: Text by correspondent(s) or other author(s); © the author(s)


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