Paul’s Flesh: A Disabled Reading of Flesh/Spirit Dualism

Abstract

This article considers the Pauline construction of a “spiritual body” in 1 Corinthians 15 and his flesh/spirit dualism more generally in light of Paul’s probable disability. I suggest that this rhetoric functioned as a strategy for Paul to claim social power in his social context by deemphasizing his physical presence, and thus reflects a negotiation with cultural patterns of disability abjection rather than a meaningful part of Christian teaching. Because of the active harm done by these dualistic constructions, however unintentional such an interpretation may have been on Paul’s part, liberative Christian theologies must reject this framing and work to integrate not just “body” and spirit but also flesh and its more negative bodily associations such as weakness, pain, illness, and death.