Body & Soul

"Set down here, therefore, the fact that orthodox Christianity has nothing against the body, and everything for it. First, God made it. Second, God loves it. Third, God took it to himself in the womb of Mary. Fourth, he walked the earth in it, not with disdain but with enough obvious pleasure to acquire a bad reputation in the eyes of fussy people. And finally, he died, rose, ascended into heaven, and reigns forever as the incarnate Lord - in a body - with flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of Man's nature. The problems raised by orthodox Christianity are anything but Oriental. They are embarrassingly - shockingly - fleshly. The current age, if it hears the true doctrine at all, finds it not too spiritual but too material for its tastes. It is not God who is too refined for us. It is we who find God's announced way of doing business slightly . . . vulgar." (Robert Farrar Capon, The Romance of the Word, 104)