[00:00:00] by analogy, we have in the course of church history raised Cubs fans and not red socks fans.
[00:00:12] You better explain what you mean with some charity here.
[00:00:25] Welcome to Christ In All Things, a conversation about meaning and purpose.
[00:00:29] It's based on a verse from the Bible, Colossians chapter 1 verse 17 which says,
[00:00:34] Christ is before all things and in him all things hold together.
[00:00:39] Christ in All Things is a listening ear into conversations about receiving and giving
[00:00:45] the love and hope of Christ. These conversations are an invitation because as much as you'll hear
[00:00:51] and as much as we enjoy having them, digital media operates from a distance.
[00:00:56] And that's not what's best for us with God or with one another.
[00:01:01] So thanks for listening. And if you're in the neighborhood, we invite you to participate in
[00:01:06] in the life that finds a tapas center at St. Paul's Lutheran Church, 210 East Pleasant Street,
[00:01:13] in O'Conwalk, Wisconsin.
[00:01:24] Welcome back to Christ In All Things, I'm Pastor Lance ODonnell, I'm Pastor Jason Schockman.
[00:01:28] And we are back for part two of our series of conversations regarding Dr. John Kleinigs book
[00:01:35] wonderfully made a Protestant theology of the body. If you haven't, if you didn't listen to part
[00:01:41] one, you may want to go back to that. And what we're doing here and this was Pastor Schockman's idea
[00:01:47] and I think it was a great one because we talked about how to handle this and actually recorded
[00:01:52] an episode which attempted to go through a Bible study that we did at St. Paul's last year,
[00:02:00] which really functions much better in person, in conversation with Bibles Open and didn't
[00:02:06] really work so well for the podcast. So Pastor Schockman had the idea that we go through the book
[00:02:15] and read a quotation here and there and then talk about it. And what we're doing at the beginning
[00:02:21] of these conversations is reading them a couple more extensive quotations and we're really
[00:02:27] we're going to read the first part of Dr. Kleinigs introduction in full. The first part of that
[00:02:32] was an episode one of their part one of this of this series and now we're going to read
[00:02:37] part two but we're going to begin with because wonderfully made the book begins with a Psalm
[00:02:46] an invocation in the Psalm and then a confession of faith. God has made us his people through our
[00:02:54] baptism into Christ, living together in trust and hope. We confess our faith. I believe in God the
[00:03:02] Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth and in Jesus Christ his only son our Lord who was
[00:03:09] conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified,
[00:03:16] died and was buried. He descended into hell. The third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended
[00:03:23] into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty and he will come again to
[00:03:29] judge the living and the dead. And I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church,
[00:03:35] the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life ever
[00:03:41] lasting. Amen. That's from page that's from Roman Roman room rule 14 in wonderfully made. And now
[00:03:49] we're going to turn, we're going to pick up from where we left off on page three of the book and
[00:03:56] I'll do the first paragraph here and then we're going to read this section and then talk about it.
[00:04:05] My body is equally important for my life as a Christian. Just as I live my entire earthly life in
[00:04:13] my human family, my spiritual life in God's family involves my body from its early beginnings
[00:04:19] to its final heavenly destination. My life in Christ is based on a physical event, my baptism.
[00:04:28] The washing of physical water accompanied by the speaking of certain words joined my body with
[00:04:33] the body of the risen Lord Jesus. Just as the right of marriage joined my body to my wives.
[00:04:41] Jesus now interacts with me physically with his spoken word that I hear with my physical
[00:04:46] ears. His audible word that animates me with his Holy Spirit and makes me a saint.
[00:04:53] Jesus also gives himself to me physically in his Holy Supper. There I receive his life-giving
[00:05:00] body and blood with my mouth and in my whole body. Through his body and blood he unites me physically
[00:05:07] and spiritually with himself and all other Christians. He also calls and equips me to serve him
[00:05:13] bodily, that is, with my actual body and its individual members. So paradoxically, my spiritual life,
[00:05:22] the life that is created and sustained by the Holy Spirit, is always lived in the body.
[00:05:28] It does not take me away from my body or occur apart from it. Rather,
[00:05:34] it takes me ever further and deeper into bodily life and into fuller embodiment as human being.
[00:05:43] It makes me at home in my body, as I live here on earth.
[00:05:49] All that makes scant sense, oh sorry, all that makes scant sense. Unless we understand the spiritual
[00:05:59] life in biblical terms. The biblical understanding of human spirituality differs radically from views
[00:06:06] commonly and rather vaguely held. Most people see the spiritual as the opposite of the physical
[00:06:13] and material. Thus, the human spirit is identified either with the conscious mind and its thoughts,
[00:06:21] emotions and self-awarenesses, or with the immaterial soul, the disembodied spirit of every living person.
[00:06:32] As such, it can exist and works best apart from the body. In contrast, the biblical view is that
[00:06:41] what is spiritual has to do with the Holy Spirit. My spirit is what makes me a person rather than a
[00:06:48] thing or an animal, a living person animated by the Holy Spirit, the spirit that gives personal
[00:06:56] life to every human soul and eternal life to every believer. The Holy Spirit makes us and our
[00:07:04] deeds spiritual through faith in Jesus Christ. As Martin Luther says, the Spirit is whatever is done
[00:07:13] in us through the Spirit. Since the spiritual life is produced by the Holy Spirit, for people with
[00:07:21] bodies, Christian spirituality is embodied piety. We human beings are not just spirits like the angels,
[00:07:32] nor animated bodies like the animals, but are embodied spirits or if you will, spiritual bodies.
[00:07:43] We don't just have bodies, we are bodies. They are not just what we are as people, but an essential part of who
[00:07:54] we are. That is why the body is so important. It has been designed to be a temple of the Holy Spirit
[00:08:04] rather than an amusement park. Like the human mind, it is meant to live in harmony with God.
[00:08:12] And his Holy Spirit. It was created for eternal life with God, not merely temporal life on earth.
[00:08:22] No matter how damaged it may actually be, every human body is designed for perfection in eternity.
[00:08:32] That is great. That is gold in this whole section. The first part of the book was important because
[00:08:43] it set the stage in the reality in which we live, in that we don't pay too much attention to our
[00:08:50] bodies until something goes wrong or something is a miss in some way. Then we start to pay attention
[00:08:59] and then we try and seize control. There are bodies. The Christian faith says that
[00:09:07] well, even natural law would say our bodies are given. We don't make our bodies. We receive them.
[00:09:17] And what we know by faith is that our bodies are meant for eternity.
[00:09:25] And this, I mean, when you said this is gold, this is why as a guy whose body is breaking down maybe
[00:09:34] more rapidly than other people in my age, I am ready. I am looking forward to praying relentlessly
[00:09:45] for the return of Christ for the resurrection of the body, the life everlasting those Romans would say it,
[00:09:52] the revelation of the sons of God, the perfection of our bodies. Even for those of you who might be
[00:10:00] listening for whom that seems a little far fetched at this point. We'll get back to there in more
[00:10:08] depth, but listen to this last sentence again. So this is the end of the opening section of Dr.
[00:10:15] Kleinick's introduction, the very last sentence. No matter how damaged it may actually be,
[00:10:24] every human body is designed for perfection in eternity. We see our bodies and we talked
[00:10:34] about this at the end of episode one where we experience imperfection in some way shape or form.
[00:10:42] Either through our own broken through our own brokenness or maybe through what we talked about
[00:10:47] people trying to use us. Or even through our own lack of perception of our brokenness,
[00:10:58] where we think, yeah, I'm good. And that's kind of how I frame the world. We don't see
[00:11:06] the eternal implication of this body we've been given very readily. You know, a little
[00:11:17] further on in this first chapter, Dr. Kleinick is going to talk about why he wrote this book.
[00:11:24] And it's one of the things that particularly struck me is in the in the Christian world,
[00:11:34] we are often seen as a great big giant buzzkill saying no to everything sticks in the market. What
[00:11:44] we do because we are people captured as it were by the scriptures and faith in the life and
[00:11:56] forgiveness that is ours through the death and resurrection of Jesus. We rejoice in these bodies
[00:12:07] understanding and this is profoundly different than the world and something that most Christians,
[00:12:16] at least in the West, that I know we really have to come to terms with this. We are not just
[00:12:24] souls with a body. Or as he says in the section, you know, we're not just spirits like the angels or
[00:12:31] we are embodied souls. Our bodies are an essential part of who we are.
[00:12:41] And that's actually not what the world really teaches or practices. If it believes anything about
[00:12:47] the soul at all, no, it doesn't. And there's all kinds of implications that we'll get into as
[00:12:54] we get quotes from later chapters. The biggest thing that we fail to recognize is that
[00:13:05] is that the eternal implication means you're more than some of your parts right now.
[00:13:11] And depending on how those parts are functioning, it carries on a greater importance. One, two, three,
[00:13:19] come Lord Jesus. It never works which I do that regularly, right? If you spend any time listening to
[00:13:26] the podcast or hanging out with me here at 210 East Pleasant Street, you've heard me count down
[00:13:32] with anticipation the return of Christ because Jesus promises someday that he will return in the body
[00:13:38] yes because he has raised from the dead in the body. And the promise is I will raise you up
[00:13:44] on the last day. And so the church throughout time has looked forward to and longed for
[00:13:52] the return of Christ, the revelation of the sons of God, the redemption of our bodies.
[00:13:58] And my sense is that the early church, the first hundred years of the church had such a keen
[00:14:10] anticipation of the return of Christ. They thought he was coming in their lifetime and so it was
[00:14:16] almost as if they stood on tiptoes with Bated Breath trying to look over the horizon to see the
[00:14:20] return of Christ. This is where your reference to the early church is important here because
[00:14:29] for a lot of reasons, we're Lutherans and we come at this from a Lutheran perspective. And for Lutherans,
[00:14:38] we're deeply molded by the question of how do we stand before God? And how can a sinner be saved?
[00:14:47] Yeah. And thus forgiveness is the free gift of forgiveness is the teaching upon which the church
[00:14:57] stands or falls. But I think the question of our day is not that right? The question of our day,
[00:15:05] I think, is who am I and beyond even who am I? What does it mean to be human?
[00:15:11] And this is where and it's not that the justification as we call it, the forgiveness question is
[00:15:16] unimportant. It remains central, but in the early years of the Christian church, the battle if we
[00:15:28] want to call it that the theological battle was about the divinity that Jesus Christ was God in the
[00:15:35] flesh and early crystallological controversies centered around that. And it's one of the reasons
[00:15:42] that we have, the thing with which we began this episode, the apostles' creed. What the creed
[00:15:51] does is, you know, creed serve essentially two functions. They creed to exist to our listeners,
[00:15:58] to defend the church or the faith against the Christian faith against error. But they also
[00:16:04] served to teach the faith and creed is simply a summary of the Christian faith drawn from the
[00:16:10] scriptures. And a pretty dense, pretty dense summary. And in that summary we confess it. We can
[00:16:18] and we count I believe in the Holy Christian church or Holy Catholic church, the communion of saints,
[00:16:26] the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and then the life everlasting. And this is my
[00:16:34] sense is in the last few hundred years, the church in time of waiting for Christ to return has
[00:16:42] gotten complacent. We think he's coming, but we think he's coming some time, maybe not in our
[00:16:52] lifetime, but some time, right? And so we don't view our reality or our bodies or even who we are as
[00:17:02] individuals in a sense of identity in terms of the return of Christ by analogy. We have in
[00:17:13] the course of his church history raised cubs fans and not red socks fans. You better explain what
[00:17:23] you mean with maturity here. Okay, okay. Now no dear listener, whether your cubs fan or not,
[00:17:33] I love the friendly confines of really that's where I really started to enjoy baseball in my
[00:17:39] college years, which I didn't really enjoy baseball before that, not much. So thanks to Mark
[00:17:47] Tredray, I came to love the cubs. And then I'm married to cubs fan too. So that helps. But when
[00:17:55] when do typical cubs fans believe the cubs are going to win the world series next year?
[00:18:03] Next year, right? I was wondering where you were going to go with this now. Go to a red socks fan.
[00:18:09] You find me a boss, find me a Boston red socks fan and you asked them when are you guys going to
[00:18:14] win the series? And they'll tell you, this is I. Yeah. This is I. Yeah. It doesn't matter if they're in
[00:18:22] last place. Their red socks fans are adamant that every year is their year to win the series.
[00:18:31] And I just, for my perspective, we as the church don't necessarily really think
[00:18:43] that Jesus could come back tomorrow or even today. And my question is for our lives in the body. Yeah.
[00:18:52] Is and as a piece of speculation. Sure. I wonder whether that doesn't have something
[00:18:59] or a significant part to do with the fact of how relatively successful that we've been
[00:19:06] in the last few hundred years in caring for our bodies. And in all things, the progress as it were
[00:19:14] the progress of the world and mortality rates are down. Life expectancies are up. We
[00:19:22] were down until COVID. We as a people have, have by and large come to believe that we can take care
[00:19:31] of ourselves and there's no problem the human can't solve including our own death.
[00:19:38] We're, we're generally speaking in the West at least healthier, wealthier, not wiser, but not
[00:19:46] necessarily wiser. And it's some of the disconcerting things that are concerning things that are going
[00:19:54] on in the world. Yeah. Put that relative progress in some peril. And that's not the topic of our
[00:20:04] at least in sharp relief to the biblical worldview. And as much as we may not think that that's
[00:20:12] actually part of the purview of this conversation, I think it actually is. Okay. Because how we view
[00:20:20] our bodies and our need to care for them whether that's through projecting a long week or
[00:20:28] not projecting prolonging the length of the life of the body. It's not a confession
[00:20:35] that I believe in the resurrection of the dead in the life of the world to come. It's a confession
[00:20:40] that this body of mine is my only chance to live and I've got to make it last as long as I can.
[00:20:46] By whatever means possible, by whatever means possible or including how that may impact you
[00:20:54] somebody else's future generations or this is my body. I only live your only live ones.
[00:21:01] You know? And so I'm going to enjoy to the most every bit of this life that I'm given. Now
[00:21:08] neither of these are new folks. Nope. There is ancient as the Stoics and the Epicurians. And if you
[00:21:17] want more on that, Google it. Sure. This isn't the framework for that. But neither of those
[00:21:27] perspectives confess that we are created with a body. We are given a body to live in. And that
[00:21:36] body is meant for eternity with its creator. I'm going to go back to something on page three here.
[00:21:45] Yeah. We're Dr. Kleining writes, most people see the spiritual as the opposite of the physical
[00:21:56] and the material. And thus the human spirit is identified either with the conscious mind and
[00:22:03] its thoughts, emotions and self awareness or with the so-called immaterial soul, the disembodied
[00:22:11] spirit of every living person as such. It can exist and works best apart from the body. That's
[00:22:18] you see that in recent Pixar film like Soul. Yeah. You know, which is really based on kind of
[00:22:26] Eastern concepts of yeah, into some degree in Plato. Right? You have this. But generally speaking,
[00:22:34] if we if we acknowledge the soul in our culture, it is a theory is out there and immaterial. Yeah.
[00:22:43] And can be separated from the body. It is. You know, and that's well, that's how that's how it's
[00:22:50] lived. The Christian confession of the human being, however, is that we are built as body and soul
[00:23:01] beings embodied spirits. Yeah. And the coming of Jesus Christ and in we though we experience the
[00:23:10] rendering, the separating of that by death part of the promise of Christ is as you said earlier. Yeah.
[00:23:19] Is the redemption of our bodies, the reordering, the recapitulation, the recreation, the new creation.
[00:23:28] It's always struck me that little chunk of Romans, right? The
[00:23:34] we're waiting. Creation is groaning as in birth pains, waiting for the revelation of the sons of God
[00:23:40] the redemption of our bodies that that little phrase in there right about the time I was you know,
[00:23:47] 1617, 18 at that started making a whole lot more sense because the the redemption of our bodies
[00:23:56] means the reuniting or the perfecting of the unity of body and soul such that bodies live for
[00:24:05] eternity. They were met we as human beings created in the Garden of Eden were meant for eternity.
[00:24:15] We're going to get into this later and maybe this is a good place to just put a pin in it and leave
[00:24:20] you hanging a little, but death is not the natural order of things as God created it.
[00:24:28] And that is a big contrast with the world. Huge. I mean, the Disney film,
[00:24:36] Older New, The Circle of Life which is a religious belief that there is an endless circle of death
[00:24:46] and life and we don't know when it began and we in it'll just keep going forever. The Christian faith
[00:24:53] however has a different message. Very different is that so-called circle gets interrupted. There's no
[00:25:03] hope in an endless there's literally no hope in an endless circle of life and death
[00:25:10] in what the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead says we're going to put a final end
[00:25:18] to this and I'm just the beginning. Yeah. And you get to be part of it, you in your body
[00:25:27] get to be part of this. You in your body. Let's hear that here that folks. You, I mean this is
[00:25:33] this is really important and a contrast and we want you to join the conversation again.
[00:25:38] Dr. Kleinigs book if you go back to the first episode in this this is wonderfully made
[00:25:44] a Protestant theology the body published in 2021 by Lexan Press and we're just quoting from and
[00:25:49] discussing discussing this worth having in your library. It's not a book that you you know
[00:25:56] sit by the toilet and read. You really got it. It's like it's like a and we've talked about this
[00:26:04] before wonderfully made is maybe liken to a multi-course French meal yeah that if you take
[00:26:13] it a little bit at a time and enjoy each piece is each each part of the meal as it comes
[00:26:20] it it grows and you rejoice in it if you try and ram through it all like you're eating
[00:26:28] something at McDonald's you're just going to get sick to yourself. So here's the rich bite for
[00:26:34] the end of this bit the end of this course. You in your body are meant for eternity.
[00:26:48] Christ is risen he is risen indeed. Hallelujah.
[00:26:55] For show notes and other information about Christ in all things visit christinolthings.org.
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