Page - 44 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 02/01

44 | Claudia Setzer www.jrfm.eu 2016, 2/1, 35–47 soul. Third, memory is created by events that act upon the self and helps make sense of subsequent events. Fourth, these events take place within a wash of events, so one’s capacity to grow in understanding is a function of time. Last, there are no rigid borders between body and soul, between past, present, and future. John also speaks of slipping from the corporeal to the spiritual via perception and memory. No one can see the Father except via the Son. No one has seen God, he tells us over and over, God is not corporeal, not visible to the eye. But, “whoever has seen me has seen the Fa- ther. How can you say ‘Show us the Father’?” (14:9) and “whoever sees me sees him who sent me” (12:45). So you have seen the Father. You have entered into the spiritual by way of your bodily perception of Jesus in the form of flesh. You have slipped across the curved railway line. This creates a permanent effect. Memory further allows the report of these experiences to pass to subsequent generations. John’s three innovative theological ideas assert that body and spirit interact in time and memory. The incarnation concept, for example, asserts that within the flux of the temporally unfolding universe, at one point the same abstract Logos that was present at creation coalesces and takes on human flesh and form. By passing from the non-corporeal to corporeal, he becomes a vehicle for others to experience the non-corporeal, a porous membrane between heaven and earth. Similarly, realised es- chatology asks readers to understand themselves as living within two kinds of time, the normal, mundane time that moves in one direction and the eternal, glorified exist- ence beyond regular time. Hearers are to understand that they have already passed from death to life. Finally, the idea of the Paraclete, the advocate or counsellor, says that the physical Jesus must go away in order for this spiritual presence to come to the community: “If I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you” (16:7). The corporeal must cede to the incorporeal, but an identity remains, dwelling with the earthly community. These three innovations from John exhibit a nuanced expression of relations between body, spirit, and temporality that moves far beyond earlier gos- pels. These thinkers, ancient and modern, articulate the crucial importance of percep- tion in bridging body and spirit and healing the pain of human separation. Today, transhumanism uses the language of biology to talk about extending the body’s per- ceptual possibilities. Enhancement of senses via technology, especially the senses of hearing and speaking, creates new ways to reach beyond the finite self. Disability Studies was a bellwether in recognising the “contingency of the body”. Nancy Eies- land showed that for the disabled, technology like wheelchairs or braces was part of the experience of embodiment, allowing a fuller flourishing of the self.19 Andy Clark says that through incorporation and restructuring, our best tools become us, that the self of embodied agency is a “soft self”.20 He notes that we need a fuller under- 19 Eiesland 1994. 20 Clark 2013, 124.