ABSTRACT
It is the scandal of Mark’s Gospel – taking the ending that most New Testament scholars advise (16.8) – that the resurrected body makes no appearance. And even though in the other gospels, as in the second century appendix to Mark’s, the resurrected Christ makes an appearance, it is neither a stable body nor a permanent one. The body takes on different properties – the propensity to appear and disappear at will, a transformation of its appearance such that even disciples do not immediately recognise who it is who is with them. Finally, the body disappears back to heaven in the ascension. The body of Christ – the archetypal incarnate being, the body given over totally in its witness to God, in its manifestation of God – is a body which constantly exceeds itself, figured forth in signs (the sacraments and liturgies, the scriptures and lives of the saints). As Ephesians puts it, ‘The Church is Christ’s body, the completion of him who himself completes all things everywhere.’ We will say more about this in the next chapter. Here, as we lay the foundations for a Christian metaphysics of the body, it is sufficient to delineate how the body, any body, disseminates itself through a myriad other bodies, which are themselves other signs where tissue is also text. As such, each of us can affect, for good or ill, the world around us. As belonging to other, larger corporations, we necessarily impact upon the world we live in, for good or ill. Similarly, that which I exclude from my body, or that which is excluded in my name from the corporations to which I belong, will affect me, for good or ill. The ghettoisations and the segregations of racism, sexism, class, and ageism done in my name, condoned by my silence, injure me. ‘To matter’ is ‘to materialise’ and ‘to mean’, to return to Judith Butler’s comment.
