Whereas you are correct in saying that inappropriate contentography is obviously adulterous lust, and our Lord even condemns lascivious conduct using the Greek word inappropriate contentea, from which the word inappropriate contentography is derived, I think it is potentially misleading to say the body is carnal and not subject to salvation, and to suggest that the divine nature exists apart from the carnal nature, and indeed, I am fearful that such an approach could lead to an inadvertently Docetic soteriology.
So, begging your pardon
@Michael Collum , as I do enjoy your posts greatly, let me expound upon, or in contemporary vernacular parlance, break down, my concern:
1. Jesus Christ, the only begotten son and Word of God, who in the beginning was with God, and was God, became incarnate for our salvation, taking onto Himself our carnal, physical nature so as to reveal to us the spiritual, incorporeal, invisible and transcendent Father, through the Immanence of his assumed humanity. (John 1:1-18)
2. Having put on our mortal and carnal human nature in the Incarnation (the Latin word Incarnate, derived from Incarnare, from which the verb incarno and the ecclesiastical Latin verb Incarnatio, from which Incarnation is derived, literally means “to become carnal,” or, to express in more pure English, “to be given flesh.”), our Lord, the New Adam, saved, sanctified and glorified our humanity in His triumphant passion on the mystical Tree of Life, the Holy Cross, and in his burial, his Harrowing of Hell, and Resurrection, trampled down death by death and exalted our human nature to a level superior even to that of Adam and Eve. To quote Saint Athanasius of Alexandria, “God became man so we could become god.”
3. The flesh will be therefore be saved, and our resurrection will be a bodily one, as Scripture and the Fathers attest, because the Incarnation of God the Son sanctified, restored and transfigured our human nature into something holy.
4. Because Jesus Christ in His incarnation united the human and divine natures in one person and one hypostasis, without change, confusion, separation or division, we apply the Christological principle of
communicatio idiomatum, wherein statements addressed to one nature can be applied to the other. Thus, it is entirely correct to say that Mary gave birth to God (to say otherwise is to embrace the grave theological error of Nestorianism), that God wept, that God fasted in the wilderness, that He hungered and thirsted, that He experienced childhood and adolescence, that He was baptized, that God laid down his life for us as a ransom for many, so that death could be swallowed up in victory, and to this end, God suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and buried, resting in the tomb on the seventh day, and that he arose on Sunday, an event foretold by the prophetic Psalm “Let God Arise, and let His enemies be scattered.”
Therefore, rather than focusing on the divine nature, which is by definition transcendent and incomprehensible, we should focus on How our Lord, God and Savior Jesus Christ redeemed our corrupt humanity, by uniting it with His divinity, and we should focus on this great and wondrous mystery, that we have a God so infinitely loving and full of love that He would, in the person of the Son, endure unspeakably brutal humiliation and suffering at the hands of the Romans, before rising again so that we who have faith in Him might rise with Him and be deified, not as uncreated persons of the Trinity, but as participants in His uncreated energies by which He reveals Himself, and that to aid us in our faith, God further condescended to send His Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, who spoke by the prophets, the third member of the Trinity, to dwell in us and serve as our paraclete, and to make it possible for fallen humanity to elect for salvation, which would otherwise be an impossibility.
So, in summary, we will not leave our flesh behind, but rather will for a time be separated from it, before God in his omnipotence restores and reassembles it, purifying it from all corruption, so that we may stand before the judgement seat of Christ Pantocrator, and those of us with a genuine, living faith, as defined in the Epistle of James, shall dwell with Him forever. This is why we should avoid inappropriate contentography, sodomy, inappropriate behavior with animals, incest and other acts of sexual depravity, because these acts desecrate our bodies, which have been consecrated at our baptism and confirmation or Chrismation as temples of the Holy Spirit. We should strive to avoid any conduct which defiles the image of God in which we are created, for all of us are sacred icons of the Lord.
