Recently a split image was posted online of actor Tom Hardy: on one side was his much younger self; on the other was a current photo bearing the less flattering marks of aging. The caption was a single, flabbergasted question: What happened?!
While the comments brought a measure of reassuring realism, saying things like “Um, nearly three decades happened…”, the shock over the very normal wear on the human body communicates an insidious line of thinking under the surface of modern, Western life: How can we—enlightened, capable, self-made as we are—let the inevitable trajectory of the human body happen to us?
Our obsession with optimizing the body and avoiding signs of aging is one manifestation of a covert gnostic belief that the body and its creaturely limits are inherently bad. Therefore the good life—i.e. salvation, flourishing—is within our grasp to the degree that we can control our bodies and free ourselves from its creaturely limits.
This distorted view of our human frame is so pervasive that the Vatican recently released a statement, warning against the dangers of what it called the “cult of the body,"
tending toward a frantic search for a perfect figure, always fit, young, and beautiful. … A curious situation arises: the ideal body is exalted ... while the real body is not truly loved, since it is a source of limitations, fatigue, aging.
The underlying message from society is clear: the body aging under the pressure of limits is the unloved body. The Vatican urged against the incessant use of plastic surgery and botox in response to this growing allergy to the optics of creaturely limits. This negative disposition is reflective of a culture that is increasingly marked by tech-enabled self-help individualism. The health and wellness market is a multi-trillion dollar industry. Keeping such a bloated industry afloat is the sometimes explicit but often unspoken reality: our bodies and the limits our human nature imposes on us make it very difficult for us to honor and love ourselves. These limits make us feel unproductive, inefficient, and ugly as time and experience wear us down.
Sociologist Hartmut Rosa notes how such limits lead to a posture of body as enemy. The result is our incessant project of “getting a grip” on ourselves via techniques of bodily modification. We mask some of the visible markers of aging thus signaling to ourselves and others that we are indeed masters of our own fate, not bound by our carnal shackles.
This mode of aggression toward the body stems from a functionally gnostic view of ourselves and the world. Gnosticism was an ancient heresy developing in the first and second centuries that asserted the created world was made by an Old Testament demiurge––a lesser and evil god––and thus the material world is bad. Material creation is a prison––our physical limits working like its guards, overseeing and enforcing our sentence of confinement. Humanity’s greatest ailment then isn’t sin, but rather ignorance––we just need to come to understand our true spiritual nature and thus be set free! Jesus, then, brought salvation by teaching this secret knowledge (gnosis).
If we subscribe to this belief that matter is bad, then salvation becomes an exercise in limit-busting. And today’s secret knowledge––our gnosis––is how exactly to bust creaturely limits.
This limit-busting knowledge is, in a word, controllability. Tools and techniques of controllability abound. Rosa, in his 2019 work Resonance, lays out our pervasive obsession with control:
Sleeping and waking, eating and drinking, sex and sports, creativity and relaxation, attractiveness and aggression––there is no longer any aspect of human life and the human body that cannot be measured and recorded, and thus improved, enhanced, or optimized by means of new biological, psychological, pharmaceutical, and computer technologies.
For Rosa, the defining characteristic of modernity is bringing more of the world under our control. This now includes every aspect of the human body. To aid us in this endeavor are an ever-expanding repertoire of surgeries, injections, medications, and technologies in order to improve ourselves. While complete avoidance of our humanity is futile (although some are giving immortality their best shot), we can certainly appear to escape our limits.
This is the new gnosis––access to the control needed to manage, or at least appear to manage, the body’s pesky confines. But this is a distinctly elitist effort. Much like historic Gnosticism––in which special knowledge was reserved for the spiritually elite––exclusivity marks our techniques of control as well. Special knowledge comes in the form of socioeconomic access to limit-defying technology. A recent New York Times opinion piece highlights this reality:
the unspoken appeal of cosmetic work is that it’s not just about looking “better” or “fixing” something or trying to remain competitive in ageist workplaces. It’s about indulging in a particular kind of experiential self-care that is infinitely customizable and accessible to only a select group. It signifies extreme wealth and belonging to an elite, all-powerful clique that gets to operate under a different set of societal norms and rules.
For Rosa, too, defying technological and societal limits goes hand in hand with access and privilege:
The more money subjects have at their disposal, the more latitude they have to shape their own lives. Money grants us the ability to materially determine, independent of the circumstances and opinions of others, where we live, what we eat and wear, where we travel, etc. Money and rights have thus become the basic media for securing modern autonomy.
Autonomy, for Rosa, is the great end of controllability. Such self-government allows us to create our own lives––indeed, our very selves––and this expensive, auto-generated self is increasingly marked by freedom from the appearance of bodily limits: superhuman productivity, impossibly fit bodies, even reversed biomarkers.
While our abilities to control are ever-expanding and increasingly socioeconomically determined, the fundamental desire to control––whether through spiritual knowledge or biological modification––is merely a modern application of this ancient Gnostic heresy.
One Early Church Father, Irenaeus, confronted the heresy of Gnosticism head on in his work Against Heresies. The second-century was a crucial time for the church as they sought to solidify their dogma against rising and detracting belief systems. Gnosticism was a top contender for derailing the church’s beliefs, but Irenaeus skillfully refuted it as an inherently fragmented system. There was simply no agreement on what exactly the secret knowledge was! Therefore, the pursuit of such secret knowledge never had an agreed upon culmination. There was no specific, mystical dogma; thus, every new idea could potentially be the gnosis.
Likewise today, there is a never ending spectrum of gnosis proliferated from endless sources. Decision fatigue clouds our pursuit and leaves us frustrated that our weary selves can’t keep up with the latest fads. There is always a new and more efficient technique, a new means of access to gnosis around the corner. The fluid and elusive nature of cultural gnosis should be a clue to us that they are not rooted in unchanging truth.
Over against the inherent discrepancies of Gnosticism and its heretical misunderstanding of the unity of God, Nick Needham recounts how Irenaeus argued for Christianity and its unified God:
He demonstrated by careful argument from the Bible that the God of the Old Testament, and the God of the New Testament, are the same God, and that the Creator of the universe is not some inferior “Demiurge” but the heavenly Father of Jesus Christ. Irenaeus also argued that salvation did not come through any secret knowledge, but through the life and death of Christ. Irenaeus interpreted Christ as the Second Adam, who by His perfect obedience had reversed and cancelled the disobedience of the first Adam.
Irenaeus went after the root of their misunderstanding. Our created bodies were not the result of an evil, lesser god. Rather, the Christian faith is one of continuity: Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who willingly took on a true body is the same God who created man male and female in their bodies in his own likeness.
The Creator’s doxological refrain it was very good included humanity in all its physicality. The shalom of Eden was bound up in dwelling bodily with our God in complete flourishing. The Fall of mankind ensued, bodily dwelling in divine presence was rendered impossible, but a way back was promised. However, this promised redemption––being restored to our created intent––is not the result of secret knowledge. Rather, it is through the life and death of a flesh and blood person––the bodily manifestation of the promised seed of the woman. It is in Jesus’ humanity as the Second Adam and promised seed that he dwelt among us the very goodness of God to crush the serpent’s head.
Largely in response to Gnosticism’s fluid free-for-all dogma, the Christian church adopted the Apostles’ Creed. This creed was a succinct and clear reflection of redemptive hope in Christ. Interestingly enough, this creed confronted the Gnostic disdain for the physical body when it concluded Christians believe in “the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting.” There will be a definitive undoing of all our Genesis 3-inflicted physical woes; all the ways our fallen nature has robbed us of God’s intended, physical design will be righted. However, our glorification will not end in being released from our humanity. Indeed, the exaltation of the Son of God did not culminate in the shedding of his human flesh, but rather its glorification. Jesus ascended with and remains in his glorified human body. Thus he will do to our resurrected bodies as well.
Our meager attempts to “glorify” our own bodies now by rejecting the limits of aging are nothing compared to this future glorification. Paul says our bodies now are merely kernels that one day will be the beautiful bloom of a resurrection body. No one looking at a kernel could ever imagine its end—that it would transform into the fullness of a flower. Our gnosis of control, manifested in all our many techniques of bodily enhancement, risks exchanging the beauty of the bloom for polished kernels.
One objection to embracing creaturely limits is that increased control is merely an exercise of dominion. The limits of aging and bodily decay are results of the fall; therefore, bodily manipulation is an act of exercising dominion––we are merely pushing back the effects of the fall!
However, this still places our hope in the wrong object. While true that our created bodies were not intended to decay, our hope is not meant to be in our ability to reverse the curse, but in the promised Seed who would crush the serpent’s head. This hope is not in a modified body via control, but a glorified body. The former can be reasonably attained through our own access, effort, and technique; the latter is only possible through the incarnate Seed as a firstfruits of the resurrection.
Christ as firstfruits then must become our guiding principle. We should care for our bodies and exercise dominion in ways that honor it as a created good and anticipates our future glorified body. Medical intervention and stewardship of general health are good and proper. However, if our care focused control eclipses our hope in a Christ-bought resurrection body, we’ve gone too far. Control in this scenario can deceptively convince us that we can move the needle of our salvation—that we can justify ourselves to the world via bodily control. Thus, there is wisdom in embracing our limits as ever-present reminders that our only hope is Jesus, and our final end is not a merely improved body, but a glorified one.
Such is the wisdom of Proverbs which says that gray hair is a crown of splendor. This is a profoundly dignified way to speak of the visible signs of bodily limits. The marks of aging bear witness to a life of hard-won wisdom. Scripture prioritizes what is gained in life over time rather than external appearance. Interesting to consider is the reality that most wisdom is gained in the context of uncontrollability––the absence of control––while learning to cut along the grain of life. This calls for an entirely different mode of relating to our bodies and the world we inhabit, a mode that is alive to and in the world as a participant rather than a competitor, a mode Rosa calls resonance. Thus, the wisdom that is marked by age is a resonant wisdom––one that is in conversation with the limits of the world. It is a wisdom that has been grooved out through a lifetime of the uncontrollable pounding rain of experience.
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Limits imply uncontrollability. Wrinkles signal our imminent deterioration. Aches remind us we’re up against boundaries. Gray hairs speak of our inevitable irrelevance. However, the Christian gospel is the good news of limits––there is no one who can optimize away sin or bust limits unto righteousness. In pursuit of glorification, our human capacities end before they begin; we are in need of an uncontrollable, alien force outside of ourselves to act upon us. The God of the Old and New Testaments took on a limited human form in order to experience the ultimate human limitation––death––to ensure that through faith in him we can dwell bodily with him in resurrected, glorified bodies.
Accepting and receiving uncontrollability is fundamental to resonant experiences. It is unthinkable that the friction of limits could result in transformation, but this is precisely the sort of counter-productive (i.e. foolish) wisdom with which God has created his world. The unpredictability of aging and bodily limits holds unique opportunities for transformation that are not merely skin-deep. It is precisely when we run up against our limits that we are freed to experience life resonantly. For Rosa, being affected by unpredictability leads to transformation. For historic Christianity, being affected by the unpredictability of the Spirit’s moving leads to the regenerative transformation of salvation. Such salvation frees us to embrace the very limits that remind us of our need.
A life lived rejecting limits is a life that forfeits resonant opportunities and thus exchanges genuine transformation with the mere appearance of control. The heart that hates limits will never hear as good news that salvation is not your own doing, but is received from God. Kernels can be polished, but the bloom is a gift that is given.