The Christ Centred Cosmic Civilisation
Rod Dreher wrote “to order the world rightly as Christians requires regarding all things as pointing to Christ”
Christ is the One in Whom in all things consist and humanity is not the measure of all things. If a defining characteristic of the modern world is disorder then the most fundamental act of resistance is to discover and life according to the deep, divine order of the heavens and the earth.
In this series we want to look at the big model of the universe that the Bible and Christian history provides.
It is a mind and heart expanding vision of reality.
It is not confined to the limits of our bodily senses - but tries to embrace levels fo reality that are not normally accessible or tangible to our exiled life on earth.
We live on this side of the cosmic curtain - and therefore the highest and greatest dimensions of reality are hidden to us… yet these dimensions exist and are the most fundamental framework for the whole of the heavens and the earth.
Throughout this series we want to pick away at all the threads of reality to see how they all join together - how they all find common meaning and reason in the great divine logic - the One who is the Logos, the LORD Jesus Christ - the greatest that both heaven and earth has to offer.
Colossians 1:15-23
The Christ Centred Cosmic Civilisation
Episode 107 - We are Theoid, Not Humanoid: Reclaiming the Sacred Glory of Our Bodies
What does it mean to be made in the image of God? Is your body merely a functional machine, or something far more sacred?
The latest episode of Christ-Centered Cosmic Civilization challenges our modern mechanistic view of the human body. While contemporary culture reduces our physical form to computational processes (even suggesting AI could achieve consciousness through sufficient processing power), Scripture reveals something profoundly different. The human body isn't just a collection of functional parts—it's a divinely crafted masterpiece bearing the very image of God Himself.
When surveyed about their bodies, most people today express one primary sentiment: disappointment. We've become captives to cruel gods—beauty, fitness, fashion—that demand impossible standards and feed our insecurities. These merciless deities require a works-righteousness approach to embodiment, leaving the vast majority feeling perpetually inadequate. Yet Jesus approaches the human form with awe, declaring that even Solomon's finest royal garments cannot improve upon the glory of our naked bodies.
Perhaps most provocatively, the episode suggests we've reversed the proper understanding of our form. What we call "humanoid" should actually be "theoid"—we don't project our image onto God; rather, our bodies reflect His eternal form. This challenges both the philosophical tradition claiming God must be formless and the theological assumption that biblical descriptions of God's form are mere accommodations to human limitation.
The implications are profound. If our physical bodies truly bear the divine image, every aspect carries sacred significance. This transforms how we view ourselves and others, granting profound reverence to embodiment itself. Rather than disappointment, perhaps we should approach our bodies with the same wonder as their Creator, who knelt in Eden's dust to handcraft them as His masterpiece.
How might reconsidering the theological significance of your body transform your relationship with it? Join us as we begin this exploration of the theology of the human form.
The theme music is "Wager with Angels" by Nathan Moore
Well, welcome to the next episode of the Christ-Centered Cosmic Civilization, and I'm hoping to start a new series looking at the theology of the human body, the head and the body and the different parts of the body, of the body, because the Bible looks at the parts of the human body very, very differently than we do in the modern world. So in the modern world there's a kind of view, almost like a modular view, that the human body, including the head and the brain and everything, is like a piece of machinery. And even in a lot of discussion of AI, the metaphor of a human person is like a computer brain, like a computer brain, and the idea is that the more rapidly a computer can make calculations like the machinery of a computer, the more rapidly it can compute, the closer it gets to a human consciousness and person such that so sophisticated and rapid are the calculations of a computer that people routinely just say, well, artificial intelligence. It is now conscious, it has a soul, it has self-awareness and everything, and all of that is not really very much to do with AI, even though AI, it does mimic human behavior and speech and so on. So that lends itself to this. But underneath that there is this underlying idea that what we are is essentially a kind of complicated machine that has different modules that can that just um fulfill a stark function and that the all of this machine is essentially functional modules. And then even the brain bit is effectively like a computer that calculates or computes.
Speaker 1:And the notion that there's something much more sophisticated and mystical about the whole of the human body, our head, our body and all the parts. The idea that there's something much more well obviously, something that the whole of the human body is more holistic, but also that each of the individual components has more to it than simply functions and the way it operates. The human body is designed with this spiritual, heavenly background to it, because everything we're doing in the Christ-centered cosmic civilization is attempting to understand the world and history and ourselves, to expand our hearts and minds, to see everything in the context of this divine empire of the heavens, where there are angels and archangels. We've looked at fae creatures. We're aware of so many more aspects to human life. We're wanting to be open to the full perspective of reality that the Bible presents to us, and part of that is to appreciate the human body in all its aspects in the way that the living God intended us to do and that we have got used to, first of all, being deeply disappointed with our bodies.
Speaker 1:In a survey done a few years ago, people were asked what word they most associated with their body and the top word was disappointment, that people were very disappointed with their bodies. And that's so revealing because in the Bible it's this very precious thing that we are to marvel at. The glory of humanity is the human body. And Jesus, you know, says oh, all the fanciest clothes in the world cannot improve just the wonder of the human body. He says don't worry about clothes, you've got a human body. What could be more wonderful and glorious than that? More wonderful and glorious than that. So he is like, constantly marveling, transfixed by the beauty and wonder of the human body.
Speaker 1:But we have in our minds that, no, like our bodies are only worthy of being appreciated if they have attained a sufficient righteousness, if we have worked enough to be justified with a human body. And then how we see that. It could be a kind of superficial concept of beauty, or it could be certain views of fitness, muscle, fitness muscle, whatever it is that we have set up as the God. Who's the God of our body. All of these gods beauty, fitness, muscle, popularity, fashion all of these are cruel gods because they are ruthlessly demanding. They constantly play upon our insecurities and make us feel worthless, and no one ever feels good enough, or very, very few feel good enough. And then, of course, it is only temporary because these ruthless, merciless gods only temporary because these ruthless, merciless gods, uh, as time passes, there is inevitably, uh, a time at which we can no longer attain the righteousness that is demanded and we are no longer beautiful enough, fit enough, muscular enough, whatever, um, maybe we just can't even just afford the fashions that, uh, that these gods demanded. So all of these gods are they really assess the human body on the basis of a works, righteousness kind of thing, and that the vast, vast majority of humanity are never going to be able to be justified according to those measures, because, you know, our genetics mean we're just never going to be able to have that particular look that the human body is supposed to have.
Speaker 1:Whereas the Lord Jesus approaches the human body from this entirely different perspective, where he's like why are you worried about dressing up or trying to improve upon? The human body is the greatest, most beautiful thing of all, and he says it's more beautiful than even all the flowers. The most beautiful flower in the world is not adorned better than a naked human body. That's how Jesus puts it. Or Solomon, with all the resources of the world and all the greatest fashion designers of the world available to him, could not improve upon a naked human body. So this is Jesus.
Speaker 1:Now, remember, jesus is the one who hand-made us from clay in the Garden of Eden at the very beginning. He's the one who knelt down in the dirt and formed us with his hands yes, out of clay, and breathe life into that, and regarded this as his finest work, the pinnacle. Well, adam, yes, it's possible that eve, formed out of the side of adam, is an even greater refinement, because if she is the glory of, if eve is, is the glory of Adam, that is this idea, that she is this manifestation, the shining forth of something of him. And so, and then that takes us into the whole relationship between Christ and church, and everything is for the church. Anyway, let's keep focused.
Speaker 1:The fundamental idea, then, is that men and women have this glory of being handmade. All the other creatures are commanded to be. The waters bring forth fish, the earth birds, the earth brings forth trees and animals. But we are not that made. We were handmade by the divine craftsman, the emperor himself, and he crafted us to look like him.
Speaker 1:Now, this business of the image of God we often explore this in different ways, but it always strikes me as so weird that that phrase, those words, just straightforwardly, even a child can understand. The image of God must primarily and obviously mean we look like God and that in every appearance of either the Father or the son in the Bible, the father and the son always have a humanoid, we might say, frame appearance. Now that should be a completely uncontroversial, should be a completely uncontroversial point. Like even a child sees that in the Bible. But there is a very long philosophical tradition that doesn't like that view of God and believes that. I mean I remember one of the early church fathers thought that what shape is God? And he thought God must be a sphere because a sphere is the perfect shape. I've also heard someone argue that it should be a cube and that the Lord God is probably cube shaped.
Speaker 1:Now I find both of those ridiculous, not because it's intrinsically odd to say that God has a form, but because we know the form of the Lord. It is what we strangely called humanoid, but we should call it theoid, the shape of God. We are in theode form, we, we are shaped as the father and the son, but we strangely call it humanoid. Uh, form, but um, there is this very long philosophical tradition that takes see, that it really is almost certainly in its mature form from the Neoplatonist Plotinus, who has this enormous impact on the intellectual life of the Mediterranean world, and he has this idea that there is the one, and the one is the negation, the opposite of all things in this world, and so everything in the world has shape and form. So then it's just taken for granted, obviously, the one has no shape, no form, no geography, no time, no place, no, nothing like that, and that's considered better.
Speaker 1:It's considered in that, I mean, for many of you if you're not used to this philosophical tradition, and I hope most of us are not too used to it but of course it just sounds so weird to say it is better to have no shape than to have some shape, because we go, no, a shapeless thing is intrinsically awful, awful. We wouldn't go up to someone and say can I just put you a compliment and say I think you're quite shapeless or you are formless. That's how you seem to me. Quite formless. That would be considered an incredible insult, and I think it is to God also, because the scriptures tell us that Moses was privileged more than anybody else because he saw the form of the Lord. So it's taken for granted that, though the people may superficially be unable to identify the form of the Lord and then I guess some pagans may go like this Plotinus guy goes oh, probably there's no form at all what Moses is privileged to see is the form of the lord.
Speaker 1:The form of the lord so it's like the innermost revelation is not formlessness but form, shape, concrete reality, substance, not shapelessness, and formlessness and empty well, I say emptiness, that isn't meant to be. That people who believe in this kind of pagan thought, when they say that god is shape, is formless and shapeless, they don't mean to say empty, but it it feels. I can't help but say empty because it feels anything that is formless and shapeless and placeless and timeless, that's nothing, that's an empty thing that has no existence. So if we just come to the Bible in a way naively people often accuse me of being naive in my reading of the Bible and maybe I own that I do actually strive to be as childlike as possible in the reading of the Bible. I don't always attain that, but that's the goal to read the Bible as a little child, rudimentary way, we would say.
Speaker 1:The image of God has to primarily mean that we are theoid, we are formed in the shape of God and we know the Father and the Son have this theoid appearance that we miscall humanoid. And there's that very, very, very strange tradition. You particularly get it in the late 19th century. Fuel backs are kind of obvious example of that. But it's. It goes bigger than that and of course it's. It's. It's found much earlier also and the idea there is the Bible depicts the Father and the Son in that form. I'll call it humanoid just for this purpose. But remember, when we say humanoid we've got to start thinking theoid. But anyway, there's this long tradition of sort of saying well, it's not always even a criticism. It's sometimes said, even by Christians, that there's, there's a lot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, even from the time of the Reformation there was this idea that when the Bible describes God, the son in a hue, as a humanoid in appearance, or the father as having the form of this humanoid appearance, that is not that it's doing that. It's a kind of projection of humans. What's happening is that the human form is being projected onto God and that what is happening is God is being presented in a human form because that's what we need. We have to project our form onto God, or that God is pretending to look like that, but because he can't reveal himself as he really is, because we can't cope with that or at least ancient people couldn't cope with that and people in the Old Testament. Well, because he continues to present himself this way in the New Testament, right through to the book of Revelation, he's always presented in this humanoid form.
Speaker 1:So the idea is, I suppose, that the people in the Old Testament weren't ready for the true revelation of God as formless and shapeless, and then the people in the New Testament also weren't ready. In fact, what would the incarnation and everything that probably set? If we're supposed to think of God as formless and shapeless, I think the incarnation probably set that back and made people think of God as even more formed with humanoid form. But there's this idea then that what God really is is shapeless and formless and spaceless, really is is shapeless and formless and spaceless, and that the idea then is that the everyone in the old testament, the law and the prophets. They couldn't cope with this.
Speaker 1:So god? So either they projected humanoid form onto him or for some they would flip that and say the shapeless, formless god. Uh, he projected humanoid form so that ancient people would be able to cope, at least think something about him, and that they couldn't cope with the truth that he is formless and shapeless. And then then in the New Testament, he carries on doing it, in fact possibly even doubles down on it, because perhaps New Testament people also weren't ready to handle the truth you know, inverted commas of a formless, shapeless God and that it had to be. Maybe people in the I don't know 4th century, 5th century, 6th century, 16th century, 18th century, whatever.
Speaker 1:Only later, after the Bible were people ready for the true knowledge of God that all the forms that God presented himself in in the Bible were actually fake or were either projected by humans onto him or he projected them as a preliminary exercise, only to be, preliminary exercise, only to be. He really wanted us to discard those forms and images that he gave in the Bible, to push on to a deeper knowledge of God that he doesn something else a formless, shapeless, timeless, placeless divinity. Now I think we want to say we're unhappy with that tradition because it seems to claim too much Like how could we possibly know that God is formless and shapeless when he never says that and in fact he sometimes says, like speaking about the encounter at Sinai, he says to them don't make a form of me, because you don't know what I look like. You haven't seen my form. Moses has. It also says Moses has seen my form.
Speaker 1:But the reason that they shouldn't make their own images of God is what? What's the explanation in the Bible? Well, it's because he has his own image, don't you? Because what do we make? What or what do humans generally make? If you look at the history of the world, around the world, how do humans represent God or gods and things? Maybe as animals, maybe as hybrids, part animal, part human, or even if they produce human statues of divine characters and things.
Speaker 1:The point is, not only are they false gods, but none of those look like the image of God. There is an image of God. Don't make your own, says the Bible. There is an image of God and that is God, the Son he is. The Lord appears to Abraham, the Lord appears to Isaac, the Lord appears to Jacob, the Lord appears to Moses, to David, to Moses to David, to Solomon, to Isaiah, to Ezekiel, to the prophets. He appears, he appears, he appears and then he becomes flesh and appears to be touched and handled.
Speaker 1:So it's not that there isn't a visible form of the invisible God. There is a visible form and it is God, the Son, and so he is the only image that we are to contemplate and rest upon. What we're not to do is either make our own images or to say, oh well, even his image is fake, because we can see that there is no image of the invisible God possible, because God has no image, he has no form, he has no shape, he has no substance. The true revelation of God is no image of God at all. Now, to me, that either to make idols that are our own imagination of what God is like, that's paganism. But to reject the image of the invisible God who is Christ, and to attempt to say, no, we can see a better knowledge of God than that we can see past him to this formless, shapeless divinity, that is to me. I find that even worse paganism. It's a more like focus. Well, no, is it. I suppose it's the same, isn't it? Both things are an attack upon Jesus Christ, upon the image of the invisible God, either to claim to make a better image yourself, or to say that you can see there is no engine where God's possible at all. Both are saying Jesus, god, the Son, is not good enough. He is a fake representation of true divinity, divinity.
Speaker 1:So look, the point of all this exercise in this episode is to it's a meditation, really to say that when we come to think about the human form, the human body, that we need to start by thinking if we and this may be impossible, some of us are so ingrained in the idea that God is formless and shapeless and that the human form is kind of almost meaningless. It's so ingrained the idea, oh well, the human form is a randomly produced, a randomly produced, meaningless output from an evolutionary process, and that all the different things about us, like our fingers, could equally well be claws or the paws of an animal, and that animals have rudimentary resemblances of each different aspect of the human body, because we are all evolved from a common origin. That's a common assumption, even though that is quite a hard thing to authenticate. But let's not get distracted by the details of that. Just the concept in people's minds is that the human form is not something that has eternal weight and meaning that literally the human form pre-existed the universe, because it is theoid, it is the form of the Father and the Son, eternally speaking. I mean, even as I say that I'm aware that it sounds almost blasphemous to the modern ear to suggest that the Father and the Son have eternally been what they are presented as in the Bible there's this kind of like oh, you can't possibly say that because obviously the Father and the Son and the Spirit are formless, shapeless, spaceless, timeless, almost burly concepts, like an absolutely indescribable non-thing or something it's like no, no, you can't. Like all of that is just human projection or it's God pretending to be something that he isn't. I know I hear it, I've heard it for a long, long time. I know I hear it, or I hear it, I've heard it for a long, long time. But I I'm just going to suggest that, at least for the purposes of our investigation into the Biblical seriousness about the human body, least say I'm going to put on hold that idea that the biblical imagery of the father and the son. Let me take that seriously. Let's put it that way.
Speaker 1:Let's try for this series to always have in the back of our minds that when the Bible describes this appearance of the Son of man, the eternal Son of the Father, and when it describes the appearance of the Father even in that kind of sense in which he is seen from a distance, let's just provisionally accept that and just take that as a starting point.
Speaker 1:The reason I'm arguing for that is that I want all our meditations on the human body, the human head and the human body to be filled with the atmosphere of the form of God, the Father and the Son.
Speaker 1:I want us to have a kind of reverence for the human body, a kind of awe and wonder that we are in the image of God and that, whatever else the image of God means that it's got something to do with ruling over creation, it's got something to do with being in community, with being male and female, with maybe even imagination, language, rationality, whatever.
Speaker 1:People load all these very, very abstract and possibly worthy ideas onto the idea of the image of God. But let's just take it at its superficial and undeniable, straightforward meaning that human beings were formed, handmade, to look like the one who made them To look like the one who made them, and if that is the case, there is a wonder and glory and sacredness to the human body, and that when we study the human body and the human head, we're going to do that We'll do the head first and then we'll do the rest of the body that we should do this with suitable awe and reverence God. That the reason killing a human being is taken frighteningly seriously in the Bible is, according to Genesis 9, because we look like God, and to kill a human is a way of saying we would kill God, and we did in fact kill God when he came among us. But every time we kill a human, it is like we kill God because we're killing something, someone that is in his image.