hensomatic christology, the end of the age

I argue for a realist, one body ecclesiology-christology, which I term hensomatism, against the more common metaphorical, disomatic view. Then I point to some of the disruptive implications of hensomatism in the realm of eschatology.

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.¹

When it comes to declarations of the unity of believers with Jesus, none surpass the boldness of Paul’s insistence that we are Christ’s body.

But how profound is this unity, exactly? If we, the Church, are the body of Christ, are we his only body? Or does he have another? Should we distinguish, as the Church has come to do, between the physical body of Jesus and his “mystical” body?

Though the answers to these questions are of great consequence, we have not, in the course of Church history, settled on one consistent, straightforward answer to them. This must change.

I hold that the Church is the sole body of Jesus and that there is not another. I hold also that the unity between the Church and Christ is absolute, such that we can say that the Church is Jesus. I term this christology-ecclesiology the hensomatic position.

First, in the same letter to the Corinthians quoted above, Paul says:

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.²

Then, the writer of Ephesians says:

There is one body³

Based on these two lines alone, the foundation for a hensomatic outlook seems solid, but let’s shift right away to the strongest jumping-off point for disomatism, the belief that Jesus has his own body and has simultaneously another body, the Church, which is intimately connected to, but ultimately distinct from, him.

Beyond the inherent difficulty of comprehending hensomatism, of wrapping the mind around how a person can have one body comprised of many bodies, the main place where disomatic murk seems to arise is from scriptural comparisons between the unity of the Body of Christ and the unity of a couple in marriage. Again, from the letter to the Ephesians:

For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.⁴

The unity between a husband and wife is poetic rather than literal; one spouse cannot move the legs of the other in the same way that they move their own legs. The “one flesh” of the married couple is composed of two different bodies that, though they hopefully stay in a state of close harmony, never become perfectly and indistinguishably melded together. The wife is her body, just as the husband is his, but she is not and does not become her marriage. The union between the two people is its own thing, and it is dissolved, for instance, when one of them dies.

If, therefore, the Body of Christ is just like a marriage, if the relation of Jesus to the Church is just like the relationship between a husband and a wife, then the notion of “body” here stays on the level of poetry and metaphor, and we recognize that Jesus and the Church are and remain two distinct entities that should seek to be as close as possible.

This disomatism was the position expressed by Pope Pius XII in his encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi:

For there are some who neglect the fact that the Apostle Paul has used metaphorical language in speaking of this doctrine, and failing to distinguish as they should the precise and proper meaning of the terms the physical body, the social body, and the Mystical Body, arrive at a distorted idea of unity. They make the Divine Redeemer and the members of the Church coalesce in one physical person, and while they bestow divine attributes on man, they make Christ our Lord subject to error and to human inclination to evil. But Catholic faith and the writings of the holy Fathers reject such false teaching as impious and sacrilegious; and to the mind of the Apostle of the Gentiles it is equally abhorrent, for although he brings Christ and His Mystical Body into a wonderfully intimate union, he nevertheless distinguishes one from the other as Bridegroom from Bride.⁵

Read consistently this way, through the lens of a marriage, it could be said that when the writer of Ephesians says, “there is one body,” that he spoke about the union itself, not denying that two different bodies make up that union.

However, other sections of scripture make such a reading difficult.

The greatest difficulty that the disomatic position must surmount is found in the same Letter to the Ephesians, specifically in Ephesians 1:23. First, it should be noted that Paul uses the definite article τὸ in describing the Church as Jesus’ body, implying that there is not another.

But far more dazzling is Paul’s use of the word πλέρωμα, or fullness, to describe the body’s relation to Christ.

And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body (τὸ σῶμα αὐτοῦ), the fullness of him who fills all in all.⁶

Fullness in this context can either mean 1) the entirety of the person or, conceivably, 2) the person, as a type, made perfect. It cannot mean two parts coming together to make a whole, because in that case, neither of the parts would be a fullness. Each would be a partialness.

Paul’s statement does not fit cleanly within bride/bridegroom imagery. In the English language, it’s commonplace for people to say about their spouses that “they are everything to me,” or “I couldn’t live without them,” or “they complete me.” To say that one’s spouse is one’s “fullness” would be, at the very least, confusing. If the bride is the fullness of the bridegroom, it means either that 1) the bride is the bridegroom, and he only exists in/as her, or 2) the bride has all of the traits that make the bridegroom the bridegroom and has them in perfection. She is a perfect, or even a more perfect, copy of him.

If the fullness language was not bold enough for Paul to make clear that he was talking about something totally new, I believe that he wanted to emphasize that the marriage union was ultimately insufficient as an analogy for the union between Christ and the Church. He says in Ephesians 5:28-33:

In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

So first, we have Paul exhorting husbands to abandon a disomatic mindset within their marriage and replace it with the hensomatism that exists in Christ’s relation to the members of his body. It’s an exhortation to move from a lesser union to a higher, more perfect one.

Then, we have him citing a verse from Genesis that is seemingly about marriage, and saying that it actually refers to Christ’s relation to his body.

But what is curious is his use of the word “however” (πλεν), which might be read, “Even though that verse isn’t really about marriage…” In Paul’s mind, true oneness, while it is an ideal between marriage partners, has actually been realized in the union between Christ and his flesh, the Church. The model for oneness has gone past the marriage language by which it was expressed in Genesis. In some sense, what once was mysterious has, in Christ, now been fully unveiled. To rigidly understand this new, profound reality in terms of the more familiar disomatic one would be to commit an error, and I think Paul means to convey this to his readers.

Further support for hensomatism can be found in the words Jesus spoke to Paul on his way to Damascus, the words which likely served as the foundation for his whole understanding of Christ and his body:

And falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” And he said, “Who are you, Lord?” And he said, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting."⁷

As has been rightfully pointed out by so many homilists, Jesus does not say, “Why are you persecuting my bride?” or, “Why are you persecuting my church?” or, “Why are you persecuting the ones I have called?” He does not even make the slightest distinction by saying, “Why are you persecuting my body?”

He simply and directly identifies with the Church.

Those words Christ spoke to Paul are referenced in a sermon from a Doctor of the Church, who, expounding his own view on the body of Christ, says:

If we consider ourselves, if we think of His body, we shall see that He is ourselves. For if we were not He, it would not be true that “inasmuch as ye did it to one of the least of these My brethren, ye did it to Me” (Matt. 25:40). If we were not He, these words would not be true: “Saul, Saul, why dost thou persecute Me?” (Acts 9:4.) Therefore we too are He, because we are His members, because we are His body, because He is our Head, because the whole Christ is Head and body.⁸

The Doctor is Augustine of Hippo, who stands with Paul as the most insistent proponent of hensomatism in the history of the Church and who arguably surpasses the Apostle in the boldness of his teaching on the absolute oneness of Christ with his body. Emile Mersch describes Augustine’s doggedness on the topic:

[H]e preaches it untiringly. He repeats again and again, on countless occasions, that Christ and the Church are one and the same thing, one soul, one man, one person, one just man, one Christ, one Son of God. Hence the whole Christ is not the Saviour alone, but the Head plus the members, Christ united with the Church. The members of Christ are one with Him: He is they and they are He. All are gathered together into this unity, and in God’s eyes they are but one well-beloved Son.⁹

Mersch, in his work The Whole Christ, cites multiple quotations demonstrating Augustine’s hensomatism. I’ve shared one of those quotations already and will share two more.

First, in response to those who might say that the church being the “body” of Christ is just another way of saying that we are (mere) vessels, temples for His indwelling, Augustine says:

His presence in us as in His temple is quite different from the presence that He has within us because we are Himself (quia et nos ipse sumus). We are He, since we are His body and since He was made man in order to be our Head.¹⁰

Augustine’s reasoning here, that because we are his body, we are He, brings to mind the teaching of St. John Paul II who, in the central work of his pontificate, the Theology of the Body, emphasizes that man “is a body”¹¹ and delegitimizes historical tendencies to schismatize the body and the soul.

Second, in a wonderful development of Paul’s words on “what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions,”¹² he says:

And so the passion of Christ is not in Christ alone; and yet the passion of Christ is in Christ alone. For if in Christ you consider both the Head and the body, then Christ’s passion is in Christ alone; but if by Christ you mean only the Head, then Christ’s passion is not in Christ alone. … Hence if you are in the members of Christ, all you who hear me, and even you who hear me not (though you do hear me, if you are united with the members of Christ), whatever you suffer at the hands of those who are not among the members of Christ, was lacking to the sufferings of Christ. It is added precisely because it was lacking. You fill up the measure, you do not cause it to overflow. You will suffer just so much as must be added of your sufferings to the complete passion of Christ, who suffered as our Head and who continues still to suffer in His members, that is, in us. Into this common treasury each pays what he owes, and according to each one’s ability we all contribute our share of suffering. The full measure of the Passion [pariatoria plenaria passionum omnium] will not be attained until the end of the world.¹³

Faint echoes of this majestic passage reverberate in theology concerning the Treasury of Merit, but one can imagine that if the illustrious St. Augustine had been born 900 years later, if he had neither the lost cathedra of Hippo below him nor above him the golden halo of the most revered of the Church Fathers, then the directness of his words might have led to tense conversations with the local Inquisition.

Such inebriating speech, flowing from an undiluted hensomatic Christology-ecclesiology, might help us understand the cautious disomatism of Pius XII. It might help us understand his desire to keep the “physical” body of Jesus clearly demarcated from his “mystical” body,¹⁴ and his desire to repudiate the “false mysticism” which he saw attacking “the immovable frontier that separates creatures from their Creator.”¹⁵

It helps us understand those who:

look upon so profound a doctrine as something dangerous, and so they shrink from it as from the beautiful but forbidden fruit of paradise.¹⁶

The doctrine of the totus Christus, the hensomatic Christ, head and body, is indeed a beautiful fruit, even more so because it threatens tired theological systems with tired ways. Following the example of Pius, we should not shrink from it. But neither should we set it safely on the mantle in a doctrinal display case. We should sink our teeth into it daily, and throw aside whatever adulterants would dull its taste.

In this spirit, I see no reason why the words “mystical” and “body” should ever meet again in any context. In our Faith, it is incoherent to distinguish the “physical” body from the “mystical,” because the body of Christ, the Church, is physical. If you are a member of that body and you require confirmation, then lift your hand and touch your face.

Regarding what is referred to as the “physical” body of Christ: if the physical form of the body with which Jesus ascended to Heaven still exists, then it is not the Body of Christ. It is one member of his body. It is one hair on the head. And while I don’t reject the possibility that that form still exists, I think it is unlikely.

To support this opinion, I first point again to Paul’s statement that the Church is Christ’s fullness, which would seem to preclude the possibility of the physical absence of anyone who at the time was a member. The thought of the absence of Jesus’ original physical form conjures up a weird vision of a zombie corpse wandering around blindly, its head somewhere far away. No; being the fullness of Christ does not allow for the absence of the fullness of the head.

Second: it is uncontroversial that Jesus is within the members of his Body. His power can flow unimpeded through those members. (See the healings and exorcisms of the apostolic age.) He can speak without his original mouth, as he did to Saul on the way to Damascus. The existence of his original physical form as a member therefore seems totally extraneous.

Third: he and our Father have made their home with us.¹⁷ It does not make sense that he would simultaneously be here, with us, at home, while also still living within his first physical form, which is not with us.

Fourth: contemporary Christians don’t seem particularly fond of thinking about where the original physical form of Jesus would have gone after his Ascension, and this is probably because the possibilities all feel ridiculous to consider. The least ridiculous is that that physical form is somehow existing in a separate dimension (?) that is populated mostly with nonphysical angels and disembodied souls. The more ridiculous possibility is that his original physical form is in our universe somewhere, perhaps on an Earth-like planet somewhere lightyears away, perhaps floating in the dark of space, perhaps in a hollowed-out star. In any case, he has opted, for two thousand years, to maintain that one member of his body somewhere which is not with the rest of the body. I do not think that such an absurdity is likely.

Though, again, I do not totally reject the possibility that it still exists, it is far more probable that on Pentecost he replaced that form with the glorified body that is the Church.

Having said my piece for hensomatism, I now want to direct the attention of the Church to one particular area of our traditional thought that looks different when examined in the light of this ancient truth: eschatology.

Eschatological Implications of Hensomatic Realism

Christian life is oriented around an expectation: that Jesus will return in glory to judge the world, to fulfill all the promises of the Kingdom of God, and to make all things new.

It was assumed by the earliest Christians that the return could happen at any moment and that the moment would undoubtedly be soon.¹⁸

Yet almost two thousand years after the Ascension of Jesus into Heaven, this moment of return, as it has been envisioned, has still not come to pass. It is only natural that after waiting so long, the Church has decided to direct its attention to other things. Thus, what was once the central concern of Christians has become, at best, peripheral, and at worst, wholly irrelevant.

The clearest evidence of the loss of the End Times mindset is the casualness with which Church authorities will talk about the inevitability of our own deaths. It was once a source of disturbance to the Church that any believers were dying before the return of the Lord; it was unthinkable that all would experience death before the Day of Judgment. Yet every week there are ordained preachers and lay Christian media figures delivering memento’s mori to their listeners, proclaiming that all of them will die, not considering how blatantly such messages contradict Jesus’ command to “stay awake.” Why would I struggle to stay awake for an event when you’ve confidently told me I won’t live to see it?

The apocalyptic emphasis on the Last Days and on the at-handness of the complete Kingdom has thus been thoroughly minimized. It has been replaced with a message of a post-death particular judgment and, if all goes well, the reward of eternity for the recently deceased in a disembodied state called Heaven. There have been negative consequences to this shift, though, the most notable one being that fewer and fewer people find the new message exciting or even interesting. These days, the substitute pseudo-gospel is increasingly looking like a dud.

Amid the malaise of the Church today, amid the atmosphere of decline and stagnation and boredom where yet there lives a lingering hope, the moment is opportune to revivify, in unison, these two startling, invigorating beliefs that have been entombed in Christian life: the belief in the imminent replacement of our world with a new and perfect one under the salvific Kingship of God, and the belief in the hensomatic Christ who is his body, the Church.

Moreover, the moment is opportune not to place a lampshade on the one belief while examining the other in isolation, but to allow them both to burn together as one light and to see what we see, even if the image is shocking.

It has been assumed that the return of the Lord would take the form of Jesus appearing in the sky, in a body that is not currently here and that would look physically similar to the one encountered by Mary Magdalene on the morning of the resurrection.

This, the traditional vision, is incompatible with the hensomatic reality of who Jesus is. The body of Christ that will appear in glory, in the air, to usher in the fullness of the Kingdom of God, is the only body of Christ, the Church.

When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.¹⁹

The seeds of these ancient words grow and blossom at the intersection of eschatology and hensomatic Christology.

The person Jesus Christ is here. His body, head included, is here. His fullness is here. It is utterly senseless, in light of the totality of this revelation we have been given, to wait in passivity for more of him, for another body of Christ, to come. Rather, Christ will work, as one does, through his one body to complete the work of the Kingdom and to extend salvation as far as he wills.

What do we make of the two thousand year wait, then? It can be understood in terms of the maturity of the body. Jesus, after being born to Mary, waited thirty years to begin his public ministry while he “grew in wisdom and stature.”²⁰ Since the re-descent of his Spirit to the flesh at Pentecost, and especially with the explosion of the human population over the last three centuries, the Word of the Lord has “continued to increase and prevail mightily.”²¹ Over two billion members dwell in the body today. Christ, in his wisdom, will decide when is the proper time is to manifest his power in full. (As a member of Christ and as one who believes in the Gospel, I think it will be very soon.)

And how will this moment play out? As the central agent of the Eschaton, what exactly will we be doing?

Simply put, we will, as the spreaders of a Kingdom, be taking and exercising political power in order to bring salvation to all who suffer. We will be imposing the will of God on Earth as it is imposed in Heaven, and we will be imposing it against what will presumably be vehement opposition from the rulers of this world (τοὺς κοσμοκράτορας).²²

I envision our tactics in this war against their rule being both peaceful and violent. So many people long for the freedom, the truth, and the good governance that God offers through his Kingdom. When a critical mass of people throw their support behind that Kingdom, especially by joining the Body of Christ that wars for it, then, ideally, political power in a given region can be transferred to the Kingdom with little or no violence. But violence, from what we read in the Revelation of John, will likely play a role in at least some places, perhaps in many. When that is the case, the Body’s imposition of Kingdom rule will look more like a traditional armed revolution, or even like a military invasion.

How is this possible, when we have been explicitly taught not to resist worldly political rulers?²³ Since Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem, through his flight to Egypt and his crucifixion, and throughout the period of the body’s maturation, meekness before the civil authorities has been important to the plan of salvation. Resistance would have threatened the existence of a body that was still weak, that still needed time to grow and build strength before it could conquer the mission assigned to it.

Yet from the beginning, the foretold end has not been one of perpetual meekness, perpetual patience, perpetual submission; rather, the end has been a manifestation of overwhelming, terrifying power by the Son of Man.

From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.²⁴

These words refer to the Church.

For the sake of all who hunger, who cry to God for salvation, work must begin right now to ready the body of Christ for revolution. Only Christ can dry their tears; only we can feed them. If you want to contribute to the harvest, contact me.