Your wisdom is always more than welcome here.

I just saw this article–very interesting post! My first comps area was on religion and the body in Christianity. R. Marie Griffiths’s 2004 work, Born Again Bodies, briefly covers the era of Smith’s life as it speeds towards connections between evangelicals and New Thought adherents in the late 19th century. It’s a fantastic read! Also, Sarah Coakley’s introduction to her edited work Religion and the Body (Oxford UP, 1997?)is, in my opinion, the best summary on the religion and the body questions out there. I was a bit miffed with some of LeFleur’s characterizations of Christianity’s relationship to the body in his short piece that you quoted–he sees it far too dualistically and negatively than other authors I have read (such as Caroline Walker Bynum). Le Fleur does not specialize in Christianity and studies Buddhism in Asia. His work is understandably not nuanced when he talks about another tradition. (Personally, I think that Christianity quickly becomes the whipping boy on the question of the body for scholars of other traditions to take out their fury.)

In my opinion, Joseph is not so much a systematizer as he is an artist who specializes in bricolage. In some ways, Joseph is like an emotion-driven Luther as opposed to a systematic Calvin. (However, Luther, who is not known as a systematic thinker, is far more consistent than Joseph–reflecting their different trainings, too.) This is just an analogy that personally helps me give Joseph some slack when his thoughts tend to get a bit disjointed or even, well, speculative. This must be my Community of Christ bias coming through, too.

From Dr. Good’s popular Book of Nature (1826, with some twenty editions in England and America before 1840, including editions for children) . . .

Note that this view of spirits as analogous to a gas rather than really immaterial goes back to the early Renaissance. I’ve not done enough reading on the history of this but philosophers like Telesio were into that. And of course in popular speech immaterial spirits were actually interpreted in a material way. (Think of how ghosts are conceived – it’s as a vaporous substance rather than being truly without place)

My guess is that some of the rediscovery of the Stoics aided here but I don’t know for sure. Typically the Stoics were looked to just for moral theory but they had some interesting physics and ontology as well.

FWIW, I’d advise staying away from “the Greeks.” I’ve spent years on precisely the topic of the body in antiquity, and it is huge. Besides, there is little payout historically for you.

I think this right. That said there is plenty of indirect influence on Joseph from more esoteric aspects of the Renaissance. (i.e. in Masonry) I spent a few years looking into this but even there one doesn’t find as much as one would hope.

Interestingly where I think the most compelling parallels arise is in cognitive science analyzing people intuitive approaches to things and how spirits are naturally conceived of. In a sense Joseph returns to a more natural cognitive view of spirits as opposed to the formal theology that had developed over the centuries. I suspect one could fruitfully argue that Joseph is doing phenomenology of a sort rather than traditional theology.

It seems to me that I have heard a lot of modern Mormons contrast JS’s corporeal theology against Greek conceptions.

Unfortunately most of these discussions take a rather naive view of Greek conceptions. Rather what is usually a problem is the conception of Christian philosophy during the medieval era which persisted into the modern era via its transformation by Descartes (whose concept of mind is actually quite close in many ways to Aquinas’ substantial souls).

The Greek conceptions were, in my view, much more palatable. Especially the Greek materialists such as the Stoics.

mmiles–agreed. This Republic… is harrowing and wonderful.