Spirit and Reason: The Embodied Character of Ezekiel's Symbolic Thinking

7: Spirit and Holiness

347 Many important lessons in life can only be grasped by personal change or transformation . The alcoholic must learn those factors and situations that pressure him to take a drink and thus put him at risk in the ways he relates to others and to his own body. The athlete must remain faithful to a training program that regulates diet and exercise. He must listen to his body at the same time he tries to push his performance to new levels. The scholar must accept criticism along with affirmation of his work if he is to see his work as a contribution to a larger common effort of understanding nature and culture, the human and the divine. Humans are embodied beings who observe reality from particular times and places. The capacity to think and reason takes place within an embodied self. However, Parmenides claimed to have transcended the prison of the senses through a shamanlike chariot ride upward to the goddess who then instructed him on the way of truth. Parmenides then offered a deductive argument on unchanging truth, which he claimed was the true reality in contrast to the way of opinion. This quest for objective truth is commonly regarded as the activity of reason. For Parmenides, the reasoning activity (nous) first of all was based on and shaped by the apprehension of what was real; this visionary, intuitional element was primary and formed the basis for including logical reasoning within the nous. Logical reasoning is a process of clarifying and cleansing what was in CHAPTER SEVEN Spirit and Holiness The Embodiment of Divine Order 348 SPIrIT AND rEASON the reason from the beginning.1 A perennial philosophical question is the extent to which the reasoning process leads to the discovery of objective truth or is merely the construction of a rationale reflecting the values of the thinker. Even though reason cannot operate on a completely objective basis, one can distinguish reason from affection through reason’s capacity to deliver a higher level of objective truth. The standing place from which we exercise reason shapes what we see.2 Thus, the problems posed by the body to the reasoning process must be addressed by working with the body and not escaping from it. Ezekiel’s visionary experiences created a larger context for the renewal of the exiles. His visions and oracles laid the groundwork for the proper functioning of the noetic and affective capacities of the exiles. His provocative rhetoric (e.g., Ezek 23:5-21) and extreme oracles (e.g., Ezek 20:26) aimed to move his hearers to a new standing place from which to use their noetic capacity. Ezekiel addressed the distortions that embodied experience can bring to one’s perception by dealing with the body. To ignore the body only further distorts the proper functioning of the rational or noetic capacity. When Ezekiel spoke of Israel’s receiving a new heart (i.e., a new locus for noetic and affective capacities), he announced Yhwh’s promise to restore a harmonious relationship between thinking and feeling by a divine gift. The exile highlighted the fact that there was a fundamental flaw in the way that the Israelites perceived reality. It was a flaw that had plagued them from the time of their election in Egypt and was one that they were unable to overcome. The only way to correct it was to receive a new heart. Yhwh promised to give Israel this new heart; Israel was challenged to accept it (Ezek 18:31). For the exiles, their removal from the land of Israel, as traumatic as the experience may have been, was nevertheless an opportunity for them to reevaluate their way of life and their relationship with Yhwh. The changes they experienced in terms of geography, culture, and political circumstances made them question the extent of Yhwh’s power and justice. Their restoration to the land would lead to self-examination (Ezek 36:31-32). These alterations in understanding how one fits into the larger scheme of things are most often triggered by shifts in one’s environment and by factors beyond one’s control. Yet the acceptance or rejection of the change facing one remains a personal choice. The exiles’ acceptance of a new heart would be the first step in their renewal as symbols of Yhwh. The second step would be their reception of a new spirit, which would be a participation in Yhwh’s Spirit. This participation in Yhwh’s Spirit would be...