Citation: Ullrich, Calvin D.. 2024. The Spread Body and the Affective Body: A Discussion with Emmanuel Falque. Religions 15: 30. https://doi.org/ 10.3390/rel15010030 Academic Editors: Espen Dahl and Theodor Rolfsen Received: 25 November 2023 Revised: 15 December 2023 Accepted: 18 December 2023 Published: 23 December 2023 Copyright: © 2023 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). religions Article The Spread Body and the Affective Body: A Discussion with Emmanuel Falque Calvin D. Ullrich Department of Historical and Constructive Theology, Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein 9301, South Africa; ullrichcd@ufs.ac.za Abstract: This article presents a constructive dialogue between contemporary theological phe- nomenology and systematic theology. It considers the writings of the French phenomenologist Emmanuel Falque by offering a precis of his unique approach to “crossing” the boundaries of theol- ogy and philosophy. This methodological innovation serves as an intervention into contemporary theological phenomenology, which allows him to propose an overlooked dimension of human corpo- reality, what he calls the spread-body (corps épandu). Within the latter is embedded a conception of bodily existence that escapes ratiocination and is comprised of chaotic forces, drives, desires, and animality. The article challenges not so much this philosophical description but rather suggests that Falque’s theological resolution to this subterranean dimension of corporeal life consists in a deus ex machina that re-orders these corporeal forces without remainder through participation in the eucharist. It argues that Falque’s notion of the spread body can be supplemented theologically by an account of ‘affectivity’ that is distinguished from auto-affection, as in the case of Michel Henry, and which also gleans from the field of affect theory. This supplementation is derived from current research in systematic theology, which looks at the doctrines of pneumatology and sanctification to offer a more plausible account of corporeality in light of the Christian experience of the affective body. Keywords: Emmanuel Falque; spread body; affectivity; systematic theology; pneumatology The wind (to pneuma) blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. – John 3:8, NRSV trans Man is a vast deep, whose hairs you, Lord, have numbered, and in you none can be lost. Yet it is easier to count his hairs than the affections and motions of his heart. – St Augustine, Confessions, 4.14.22, Chadwick trans 1. Introduction This article presents a constructive dialogue between phenomenology and systematic theology. Its primary interlocutor will be the French phenomenologist and theologian Emmanuel Falque, whose principal contribution to systematics will come to be judged by his philosophical description of human corporeality, a theme increasingly pronounced in Christian dogmatics. 1 Assessing this description, however, requires delineating Falque’s relationship to theology in the first place, for it is only in the act of theologizing, he claims, that a mature phenomenology of the body comes into view. 2 Indeed, intervening in the debate between phenomenology and theology, which has preoccupied the enclave of reflection in the ‘theological turn’ ever since Dominique Janicaud’s critique, is central to Falque’s program of embodiment, since, according to him, resisting the confusion of these boundaries is in fact what engenders a proper and transformative encounter between them. It is precisely on the basis of such confusion that a baptized phenomenology Religions 2024, 15, 30. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15010030 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions