'Bodies are central to the Christian story. Creation inaugurates bodies that are good, but the consequences of the fall are written on our bodies - our bodies will sweat as we labor in the fields, our bodies will hurt as we bear children, and, most centrally, our bodies will die. If the fall is written on the body, salvation happens in the body too. The kingdom of God is transmitted through Jesus' body and is sustained in Christ's body, the church. Through the bodily suffering of Christ on the cross and the bodily resurrection of Christ from the dead, we are saved. Bodies are not just mirrors in which we see the consequences of the fall; they are also, in one theologian's phrase, "where God has chosen to find us in our falleness." Bodies are who we are and where we live; they are not just things God created us with, but means of knowing Him and abiding with Him.'
Lauren F Winner, Real Sex: the naked truth about chastity, p.37.
