Nouslife: Jewish and Christian Views on Bodily Pleasure: A review

14 March 2019

Jewish and Christian Views on Bodily Pleasure: A review

For a long time I've been drawn to Jewish spirituality in relation to hasidic attitudes to celebration and pleasure. As a probable background to Jesus' own spirituality it has been something that has helped me to weigh up inherited European Christian attitudes to bodiliness and to appreciate the good-givenness of the material creation. And in writing those things, I partly illustrate part of the point of this book -that Christian cultural history versus Jewish cultural history- has tended to be suspicious of pleasure and this has led to a set of cultural postures -historically speaking- that have been less that celebratory about bodily pleasure and have tended to inculcate a default guilt posture about them: -'if it feels good it must be wrong' sort of thing.
It's not my upbringing but I recognise it in others -especially in many on the fringes of Christian faith. Interestingly most active Christians I know don't tend to take this view. It seems it's a perspective that lingers in cultural christianity and perhaps helps keep some at least from more active discipleship: the fear of living in constant intensified guilt. That's why it's an important thing to look at, in my view.
As for me, I have for as long as I recall knowing something about Jewish (hasidic-related) spirituality been drawn to its appreciative approach to life's positives and even some of the less 'seemly' things; having a specific blessing for going to the loo seems a good thing to me.
I have to confess I'm still working through this book -one downside is the e-book version type seems to be dark grey and unfortunately my device doesn't change it to white or paler when it is on night-time mode. As night time is when I get most of my book reading done at present, this has delayed my review -but I decided a review of part is better than none at all!
So far I have found really helpful the historical background accounts of Judaism in the first centuries of CE and of Christianity in the same period. This really helps not only see the trajectory of the thesis but provides helpful background to the NT itself and intriguing lines of enquiry in my own mind about the relationship between the two contemporary forms of religion we call Christianity and Judaism -but are arguably very close siblings -and neither are like what was Judaism until the fall of the Temple in Jerusalem. Our situation is not the same one as faced by James, Stephen, Saul/Paul.
That said, I am concerned at this point in my reading that the author is downplaying the significance of the church's struggle with gnosticism in that it forced early church theologians to recognise the 'Jewish' appreciation of matter and the goodness of creation. So it seems to me that perhaps the real question is how, despite its best insights in that respect, much Christian popular piety was captured by gnostic disparagement of 'flesh' for so long. Perhaps as I read on there will be more insights on that. It does seem that cultural capture aided by the growing antagonism between official Judaism and official Christianity (which to our shame provided a bed rock for anti-semitism) may have misled us quite seriously.
From what I know/suppose of early twentienth century western Christianity, it is at least plausible that the thesis of this book in relation to the entertainment industries has at least a germ of truth to it.