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Document Details : Title: Divine Lives Subtitle: Christ, Community, and Divine Embodiment Author(s): BIDLACK, Bede Journal: Studies in Interreligious Dialogue Volume: 22 Issue: 2 Date: 2012 Pages: 134-146 DOI: 10.2143/SID.22.2.2965148 Abstract : This article challenges the understanding of the relationship between the one God and the subject of divine embodiment, either in Jesus or in the Christian believer. The article turns to a Daoist diagram, which depicts bodies as cosmic communities that invite divine embodiment through meditation practices. Through mental processes, different organs of a practitioner’s body become suitable abodes for not one, but several gods. These body-gods aid the practitioner’s quest for immortality and generate salvific, divinizing energy for the entire cosmos. The paper questions whether classic, Christian notions of monotheism and the single-body-single-soul person inhibit understanding of the mechanics of divinization. It retrieves theologian Teilhard de Chardin’s cosmic vision of embodiment and focuses on the divinization of the monads of the universe, perhaps akin to Daoist understandings of the presence of body-gods. |
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