‘Christ says that his own flesh is of no use but that the spirit is of use and gives life.’55 This is related to the more widespread loss of the incarnate nature of metaphor as a whole, and its substitution by simile: in the Eucharist ‘this is my body’ becomes ‘this signifies (is like) my body’. But there is another reason for rejecting the body: it is equated with the transient, ‘earthly corruption’, whereas the word is equated with enduring changelessness, which is in turn how the divine is now seen.
