In a religious tradition founded on the act of incarnation, one might assume that the role of the physical body in the spiritual life would be not only clearly articulated, but also fully embraced. Yet within the Christian theological tradition, this is not exactly the case. This body that is made in the image and likeness of God has been both exalted as one of God's crowning works and denigrated as the very source of human sinfulness. Inherent in these mixed messages is the underlying belief that the body is not only different from, but profoundly inferior to the spirit and can thus prove a dangerous threat to those on the spiritual quest. Feminist philosopher of religion, Grace Jantzen, connects this elevation of spirit over body to the emphasis which Christianity places on the Western symbolic of mortality, in particular, the casting off of the mortal body in death to make way for spiritual immortality. In contrast to the violence, sacrifice, and death which make mortality a fundamental category of religion and philosophy, Jantzen proposes a symbolic of 'natality' and flourishing which she connects to this life and this world.

This dissertation examines Jantzen's focus on natality while also asking how mortality, as part of the spiraling of the life/death continuum, may be theorized more positively within the paradigm of natality. Engaging primarily with Jantzen on the issues of body, materiality, and temporality, I have also drawn her into dialog with Luce Irigaray, Augustine, Rosi Braidotti, and Elizabeth Grosz. I argue that while Jantzen's focus on natality provides a much needed counterbalance to the Western symbolic's preoccupation with mortality, the human experience of limitation, loss, and death, must also be afforded a vital place in a feminist analysis of the body. By including the limitation, suffering, and death of the physical body which are part our meaningful, embodied existence, this dissertation argues for a feminist analysis of the body that will privilege neither natality nor mortality. Instead it explores the fluid, spiraling nature of our lived experience as bodies, in the Irigarayan metaphor so key to Jantzen, "becoming divine."