Is There a Flesh Without Body?

Abstract

This paper was originally presented at a colloquium on Michel Henry’s book Incarnation at the Institut Catholique Paris. Michel Henry’s response to the present study can be found in “À Emmanuel Falque,” in Phénoménologie et christianisme chez Michel Henry, ed. Ph. Capelle (Paris: Cerf, 2004): 168-182. This response was reprinted recently in Michel Henry, La Phénoménologie de la vie, vol. 5 (Paris: PUF, 2015).

The Life-Idealism of Michel Henry

“…that is not identical to the distance of sin." 73 But when Henry denies that the human being is created, he means to deny that the human being is totally external to God in such a way that he could continue to exist apart from God, just as a house can exist apart from its creator. 74 Now, it is true that for Henry there is a certain moment of "ontological overlap" or "contact" between the human being and the absolute Life of God.…”

Is There a Flesh Without Body?

“…The second reason: Judaism itself has followed the path of Hellenism. The idea of an earthly body delivered over to death marks not only Greek philosophy but also the Jewish conception of the earthly body as a mortal body by its interpretation of the silt of the earth (7)(8). The third reason: phenomenology itself, since Husserl and even more so with Heidegger, has also embarked on this path of a "Greek presupposition of contemporary phenomenology," by considering the flesh to appear always in a body that is open to the world (intentionality) and unilaterally directed toward its end (being towards death) (21).…”

“…Bultmann's demythologization in his Jesus: Mythology and Demythologization (a collection of papers from 1926 to 1951) has no other aim than to strip Christianity away from archaic forms in its Judaic roots. 8 To read the prologue of Genesis (the creation) only through the optics of the prologue of John (birth) is probably not sufficient: "The concept of creation now means generation, and the generation in absolute Life's self--generation of that which happens to oneself only by coming in that self-generation" (183, my emphasis). The formula from the first council of Nicea (in 325) states the opposite instead.…”