Matter Matters

All Creation Reconciled

An Address Given to the Oxleigh Fellowship on October 11^th, 2003[1]

The stars are spinning their threads,

And the clouds are the dust that flies,

And the suns are weaving them up

For the time when the sleepers shall rise.

The ocean in music rolls,

And gems are turning to eyes,

And the trees are gathering souls

For the day when the sleepers shall rise.

The weepers are learning to smile.

And laughter to glean the sighs;

Burn and bury the care and guile,

For the day when the sleepers shall rise.

Oh, the dews and the moths and the daisy red,

The larks and the glimmers and flows!

The lilies and sparrows and daily bread,

And the something that nobody knows!

George MacDonald – from The Princess and Curdie

Sin: A Disintegrating Influence

Sin typically effects things by causing disintegration. Disintegration is the opposite of integration. Any system, whether it be a human being or a car, is healthy to the extent that there is integration among the constituent parts. When sin entered the universe, separation occurred where there had previously been wholeness, health and integration.

But the disintegrating influence of sin was not a total, only partial. In our own lives, for example, we are subject to a tension between the force of physical disintegration and the force towards physical integration. At first the force of integration seems strongest. A baby enters the world and begins quickly to integrate: the various components of his body begin integrating with themselves as he learns to walk, respond, touch, talk and control his movements. As his mind grows he begins integrating with the outside world, with others and with nature. Yet, as life continues, as the person grows old, the process of disintegration sets it. Complete disintegration of body occurs only when the mind and spirit become detached from it.

As I have just described it, this process of integration and disintegration may seem to be diachronic. But in fact both these processes occur simultaneously in the human person all the time. Each life is a continual shifting of the balance between integration and disintegration, as represented in the polarities of health and disease, well-being and pain, strength and weakness.

We have represented in the human person a struggle that lies at the heart of reality itself. It is a struggle that feels abnormal since it is an aberration of our original design. The introduction of disintegration into the human experience only occurred as a judgement after man ceased to be integrated with God, having isolated himself to seek autonomy. The corollary of this was that not only did a separation occur between God and man, but also we begin to find this fissure occurring within man himself between the force of integration/health and disintegration/death.

It takes an event like the Fall to help us realize the extent to which God held everything together. God is like the hub of a wheel that allows individual mechanisms to integrate with each other. Sin occurs precisely at that moment when we believe the illusion that we can go it on our own and do not need the leadership of the Almighty to hold everything together. The event we call history has proved the experiment wrong, showing that everything disintegrates when man is isolated from his Master. We find that man not only is isolated from his Maker, but also isolated from nature and from his fellow man.

Man’s isolation from Nature was one of the first curses after the fall (though Genesis records that it didn’t come into full effect until the time of the flood). Fulfilling the dominion mandate of Genesis 1:28 becomes difficult: Nature no longer co-operates with man’s dominion but pulls against him at every turn. As if that was not enough, in this century we see man withdrawing from nature even further. Thus, the odd spectacle of such things as computerized tractors which allow man to have dominion over Nature at two or three removes from Nature herself. As human cloning and test tube reproduction allow man to expand numerically without having to personally obey the command to be fruitful and multiply, so technological devices enable Nature to be dominated at many removes from man himself.

God’s judgement on sin is often to simply allow the principles of sin to be carried to their full extent. Tom Horward put it another way when he referred to punishment that not only fits the crime, but “in which the punishment is simply the crime itself turned back on the perpetrator.”[2] Since the principle of sin is separation from God, and since it is God that holds all reality together, the full realization of the principle of sin is the disintegration of wholeness. Thus, we remember that the judgement at the time of the tower of Babel was a separation between form and meaning in the linguistic arena, leading to chaos.

Chaos always occurs as a result of wholeness or integration being separated. Consider the chaos so apparent in the arts today as a result of form becoming separated from content. Similarly, there is the philosophical chaos when philosophy is detached the real world, when mere intellect ceases to be integrated with actuality. Or consider how in today’s cinematography you begin to have an emphasis on form at the expense of content; or the separation occurring when the forms or external signs of love become separated from the content of love; or how in the world today there are various mechanisms to separate man from his reason, his will and sometimes even his unique individuality. In all such cases – and they might be multiplied endlessly - sin is an unmaking of wholeness. When sin is complete, the fissure between things that were originally integrated becomes pervasive.

It may seem that this pretty well sums up the direction in which the human race is headed. It is not just a law of physics (isn’t it called the 2^nd law of thermodynamics or something like that?) that everything tends towards disintegration, but an empirical fact when we observe the direction in which the human race is heading.

Christ: An Integrating Influence

We need not despair, because there is a stronger force at work – a force of Order - that will eventually swallow up death with life. (1 Cor. 15:54-55) Wholeness began to be re-established at the incarnation when divinity and humanity, so long at odds, were reconciled in the God-man Jesus Christ. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us in order that there might be a re-uniting of things that, in God’s original design, existed in a state of wholeness. Theory is reunited with actuality as our worldview becomes consistent with our experience, and our behaviour ceases to be detached from the objective truth. Body is reunited to spirit as resurrection swallows up the separating influence of physical death. Man is reunited with his fellow men as love swallows up the separating influence of hatred, greed and unforgiveness. The Bridegroom is reunited with His Bride, and finally all creation is reunited with the Creator, as God reconciles all things to Himself in Christ.

The things that were split, separated, divided, detached, disjoined, disintegrated – however you want to word it – through Satan, are brought together and made whole in Christ. We might consider how this applies in a variety of contexts, though I would like to spend the rest of my talk looking at just one area where this is true – where there will be a re-integrating of two things that were separated at the time of the fall. The two things I refer to are spirit and matter.

The Reconciliation of Spirit & Matter in the Incorruptible Body

Earlier I mentioned how sin had caused a separation in the human being between matter and spirit. This separation is fully realized at physical death when the body decays and the spirit lives on. In our resurrection body, however, spirit and matter become irrevocably conjoined as they were before the fall. Thus Paul could write in 1 Corinthians 15:42-44 (referring to the resurrection body),

The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. (See also 1 Cor. 15:50-55)

It is easy for people to think of the spiritual body being non-physical because our experience has always born witness to the separation between spirit and matter. Hence, when Paul makes the contrast between a natural body and a spiritual body, it might be easy for someone to think of the resurrection body as being non-physical. But it is precisely because of this distinction, this separation between spirit and matter, that we need our resurrection body: a body in which there can no longer be a fissure between spirit and matter.

When Paul contrasts ‘natural body’ with ‘spiritual body’ in the above passage, he does not, therefore, have in mind the fact that the former is physical. The natural body Paul refers to is, of course, physical, but then so is the spiritual body. (Recall how Jesus, after He was in his resurrection body, could eat and be touched.) Paul explains what he means by ‘natural body’, which is a body subject to corruption, weakness, and death.

This helps us to understand why death is so devastating. Everyone feels the string of death - the sheer unnaturalness of it. Why is this? Whether we are aware of it or not, the reason death strikes us so deep is because the separation between spirit and matter is fully actuated. Spiritually we become naked at death, to use Paul’s imagery from 2^nd Corinthians 5. We become naked because we cease to be clothed in flesh.

For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. (2 Cor. 5:1-4)

As this passage makes clear, we do not want to become fleshless, immaterial ghosts floating around eternity forever, as some have imagined. This tent of mortality is a burden to our spirits, not because we long to be unclothed in flesh, but because we long to be more fully clothed. To be fully clothed in our heavenly habitation - that is, our resurrection body - involves more than simply a long life without death, for when our body is fully fused with our spirit, then the physical experience we enjoy in our body will take on a quality that is inconceivable in our lower state. In the new body the spirit will no longer be in tension with material flesh. In a way that is presently inconceivable, resurrected flesh will be the very means by which our spirit will be liberated, as water liberates a fish or as air liberates the bird. (For more on this subject, see The Glory to be Revealed.)

So our spirits, confined as they are to our corruptible bodies, are currently held back and restricted. Flesh is not a prison for the spirit, but our present corruptible flesh is. That is why, when we die and go to heaven, our spirits will no doubt feel a certain degree of freedom even before we are clothed with our new body. Even now, groaning under the burden of our earthly tent, there can be occasions when we seem almost to break free from the bonds of our corruptible flesh: when, for example, the experience of deep joy or beauty stirs us so acutely that our spirits seem for a moment to escape, to catch a brief glimpse of something beyond ourselves with which we long to join. Such an experience is inevitably tinged with a melancholy aspect since it accentuates our present alienation. C. S. Lewis had one of the characters in Till We Have Faces describe this kind of experience.

“It was when I was happiest that I longed most. It was on happy days when we were up there on the hills, the three of us, with the wind and the sunshine – where you couldn’t see Glome or the palace. Do you remember? The colour and the smell, and looking across at the Grey Mountain in the distance? And because it was so beautiful, it set me longing, always longing. Somewhere else there must be more of it. Everything seemed to be saying, Psyche come! But I couldn’t (not yet) come and I didn’t know where I was to come to. It almost hurt me. I felt like a bird in a cage when the other birds of its kind are flying home.”[3]

I think there must be this caged bird feeling in all of us to some extent. Can any person, even the happiest, be ever fully content? Is there any person who has never felt that far away call which is both joy and sadness to the one who hearkens? Joy because it whispers to us intimations of a loveliness beyond all earthy experience; sadness because we cannot now go to join the dance, our spirits cannot soar to mingle with the beauty of which we now experience the lower reaches. We long for so much often without even knowing what we are longing for. But our spirits know and they will continue to groan until the time when the time when the sleepers shall rise.[4]

Creation’s Expectation

So far I have spoken of the conjoining of spirit and matter in terms of what it means for us human beings. We need to extend our vision further, for when we talk of matter and spirit being reconciled in the human being, this is a paradigm of what will occur on a far larger scale with matter and spirit itself. As the curse affected all of creation, so it did not merely cause a rift between spirit and matter in the human person, but also in the whole of Nature.

In Roman 8:18-22, Paul writes as follows:

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labours with birth pangs together until now. (Rom. 8:19-22)

We see here that salvation includes the whole creation. That is more than just human beings. The whole creation includes all Nature. Just as we can eagerly expect (as a result of Christ’s resurrection) to one day be clothed in incorruption when we are changed into our new bodies (1 Cor. 15:50-54), so Nature eagerly expects (as a result of Christ’s resurrection) to be delivered from corruption into glory.

This is nothing new. We know that the curse is going to be lifted when the Lord ushers in the new earth. What I think is less realized is the extent to which the curse has actually affected nature, and therefore the glory that will be revealed when that curse is finally removed.

The material world, once spiritually fecund, vibrant and animating with the life of God, was ‘put to sleep’, so to speak, at the time of the fall. Sin cast a spell over the material universe that caused its spiritual vibrancy to go dormant. Let us not, however, think of the material universe as being spiritually neutral. It may appear that way, but only because Nature is in a kind of deep freeze. One day the spirit of Nature will be reawakened, and then the heavens will rejoice, the earth will be glad, the sea and all its fullness will roar, the field and all that is in it will be joyful, the trees and the woods will rejoice and clap their hands before the Lord, and the mountains and the whole earth will break forth into singing. (Ps. 96:11-12, Is. 44:23 & 55:12) Praise the Lord!

No wonder that the natural creation, having been put into a stooper by the bad magic of sin[5], now groans in earnest expectation, very similar to our own groanings that Paul referred to in 2^nd Corinthians. As spiritually inactive and passive as Nature has become, it has not totally lost the memory of its former glory nor the hope of its future awakening, as Paul makes clear in the passage from Romans 8. That is why the wind and the waves can obey the voice of Jesus and also why Jesus could say that if the multitude ceased to praise him that the very stones would cry out. (Lk. 19:40)

Every once in a while you hear a story of trees praising the Lord or communicating to someone, and similar cases where Nature temporarily breaks out of her bondage. And all the time, Nature groans, straining to break out of the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty that comes when the sons of God are revealed on the earth.

I have often felt this groaning of Nature. Often, alone in a wood or mountain top (usually it happens in woods, for it is trees that, of all natural phenomena, seem to be most latent with spiritual life[6]), I have felt an energy present that seemed to be trying to break through. During such occasions, it is as if something far and remote, yet imminently near, is trying to communicate with the spirit inside me. At such times, I have almost felt that I could reach out and touch something, whatever it is, that is pulsating all around me from the trees and the ground.[7]

Yes, I know what Paul meant when he said that all creation groans in expectation. I have felt the groaning. I think we all have to some extent, even if we don’t know how to verbalize it.

Matter Matters!

In earlier times, when we weren’t so far removed from when Nature was put to sleep, people still retained a memory of the earth’s spiritual dynamism. In the ancient world, Nature was perceived as either divine or the inseparable mediator of spiritual meaning. How far we have come since then! The growing superstition in Western culture is now that the world – and even man himself - is a random collection of particulars void of any transcendental meaning.[8]

The powers of darkness will always try to undermine the importance of matter in our own minds, introducing a divorce between matter and meaning. If they cannot do it with the secular heresy of naturalism, they will do it with the religious heresy is gnosticism. Gnosticism has various forms; in its original form gnosticism denied the validity of the physical and, therefore, questioned that Jesus was a fully human, fully physical, man. Now days we would be alerted if anyone started preaching such a heresy, but that does not mean that there are not more subtle manifestations of the Gnostic heresy to which it is easy to fall prey. There are many movements and groups today that undermine the importance of the physical realm, often in the name of spirituality, meditation, self-denial, and so on. What is forgotten is that the physicality of Christ is central to Christianity. Just as Christ was able to redeem mankind by taking on the nature of man, so He was able to redeem the material world by becoming material himself. We talk about Christ reconciling all flesh to Himself; but we might equally speak of Christ reconciling flesh itself.

That is why we should revolt against any form of Christianity that at all de-emphasises matter. Matter is essential in drawing us closer to God, as Lewis realized when he wrote that “Something of God…flows into us from the blue of the sky, the taste of honey, the delicious embrace of water whether cold or hot, and even from sleep itself.”[9]

Christianity is a very fleshy religion, with the rites of baptism, marriage and breaking of bread at the heart, a testimony that God himself took on flesh. And it will not be until we actually see Jesus face to face in the flesh, that our joy will be complete.

Conclusion

It may be helpful at this point if I briefly summarize the main points that I have tried to bring out. We began by consideration how sin disintegrates things that, in God’s original design, existed in a state of wholeness. I pointed out how two forces are at work in the world: the force of sin which separates things, and the force of Christ which re-integrates. I then went on to consider how this was true with regard to the separation between matter and spirit. I considered this first of all with relation to the human body, and how matter and spirit will be reconciled in the resurrection body. Then I considered how matter and spirit will be reconciled in the whole creation. I ended by pointing out how centrally important all this makes matter to the Christian faith. This conclusion is not of mere academic interest, but should affect the way we live and breath in this world: a world pulsating with the breath and heartbeat of Christ; a world animating with spiritually; a world in which matter is meaningful, not in a mere theological sense, but in the fullest sense of what it means to be alive.

Endnotes