fleshy sex & spiritual fruit in mydirestraights ed

'paul the proto-encratite' [set/gal/rom: 'brides of christ'] mydirelistories:

~*~

~*~


WE
THUS SEE
that at three points in his discourse
PAUL repeats the same highly significant
sequence of ideas?


IN their
former state of being in the flesh,
Jewish Christians had been obligated
under the Law.


THIS Law
is a law of flesh, because with its emphasis on fleshly obligations
and especially procreation, it inevitably leads
to passion and
desire.

-


HOWEVER,
under the NEW dispensation
afforded to Christians through baptism,
which is an enactment of Christ's death and resurrection,
they are born again freed of the obligation to the flesh,
that obligation which produces sinful desire in the members
and fruit for death.


-


THE erotic life
of Christians is ideally entirely devoted to the NEW bridegroom, CHRIST,
and the joining with this bridegroom results not in fruit for death
but in spiritual fruit
for G D.


~*~


THE emphasis
on embodiedness involved in being Jewish,
in BOTH senses of "flesh," that is, valorizing circumcision and other fleshly practices as well as concentrating on genealogical connections,
implies necessarily the obligation
to have children?


-


The ONLY solution, then,
is to ESCAPE from the condition of being in the flesh,
to die to the Law and be REBORN in the NEW life of the SPIRIT,
which spiritualizes precisely those fleshly, embodied aspects of the Torah,
kinship and the performance of jewish ritual and thus
sexuality.


-


FREED
from the captivity of the letter,
the flesh, the commandement which actually causes us to sin, we CAN serve g d in the freedom of the spirit AND
escape from that which stirs up
in our members.


IT THUS constitutes
a return to the pre-lapsarian state in which Adam dwelled when he lived apart forn the Law, that is,
both the law to be fruitful and multiply AND the prohibition
to eat of the Tree of Knowledge.


FOR THE CHRISTIAN,
Christ and dying with Christ constitute RETURN to this state of grace
and redemption from the death and the bearing fruit for death
which Adam's transgression occasioned,
as opposed to the bearing of spiritual fruit for G D of
ROMANS 7:
4.


"IN THE FLESH" here, then,
like its equivalent, "in the letter,"
means simply in literal Jewish existence,
in Israel according to
the flesh!


Just as the Law itself
is not sin but causes sin
as an inevitable consequence of its commandment to procreate,
so being in the flesh, that is, being under the Law, being Jewish and THUS
committed to physical, Jewish continuity, is NOT ipso facto EVIL
but LEADS to sin, once more by preventing the exit
from sexuality.


ALTHOUGH
life in the spirit
is obviously superior to life in the flesh,
as the allegorical is superior to the literal,
"in the flesh" here has no pejorative meaning of its own,
that is, it is devalued with respect to the spirit but not figured as something morally or religiously evil
in itself!
/u]

It is primarily,
as I am claiming throughout,
a hermeneutical term.


The state of
remaining in the literal,
concrete, fleshly situation of the old Israel does, of course,
have negative consequences,
which PAUL emphasizes,
largely to disabuse Jews of any sense
that the Law makes them superior
to the gentiles.


JEWS
bear fruit for death,
that is, they have children who will feed the death machine,
while Christians bear spiritual fruit,
fruit that cannot
die.

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engel

01 aug 2005 - bewerkt op 15 mrt 2008 - meld ongepast verhaal
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