by Pastor Mark Chin
How are we, as Christians living in the twenty first century, to consider and care for our physical bodies and our health? Historically, concerns such as these have often been neglected or ignored by the Church, being deemed of secondary importance, especially in light of the more pressing battles over such fundamental doctrines of the faith as the deity of Christ, the Trinity, the atonement, justification by faith, or the inspiration of Scripture. Many would argue that such neglect is the fruit of a Western Christianity that has historically leaned heavily upon a Platonic paradigm for its anthropological view of human nature, one that exalts the immaterial soul and disparages the material body, making the body and matters of health unworthy of serious theological consideration.[1] Whatever the reasons, the consequence of such neglect by the Church has frequently resulted in dogma, ethics, and praxis for the human body and health that are frequently informed and driven as much, if not more, by the prevailing culture, philosophy, or worldview of the societies we live in, rather than by the Word we profess to be authoritative and sufficient for the entirety of our human existence.
The modern and post-modern eras have been no exception to this pattern. Since the advent of the Enlightenment and the rise of the modern scientific worldview in the West, the answers to the questions posed above, have been increasingly informed by the scientific method, the physical discoveries, and the naturalist[2] conclusions of the clinical sciences. Conclusions so derived have, in turn, increasingly challenged the orthodox Christian worldview, especially its understanding of what it means to be human. The human body, as a modern scientific concept, has increasingly come to define who we are as persons and as human beings in the West, along with the ethics that govern our lives. Clinical scientists have become the prophets and theologians of the West and physicians have become our pastors and priests, the arbiters of life, death, and truth as it pertains to the natural world and human existence.
Such a trend shows no sign of abatement even in the postmodern era. Nowhere is this trend exemplified more than in the present scientific study of the brain. Fueled by the technological wonders of brain imaging that have begun to locate capacities once attributed to the human soul (cognition, behavior, and emotions) in various parts of the brain, the emerging wonder-field of neuroscience now hopes to provide a molecular and biological explanation for God, faith, and the soul in the higher functions of the human brain.[3] Our modern understanding of the body claims to explain and define not merely us, as human beings, but, allegedly, our faith and God as well. Clearly the body and its affairs are no longer things of secondary importance for the Christian community.
For many in the realm of contemporary Christian scholarship, such neuroscientific contributions to the anthropology and theology of the human body have been invaluable in shaping a more “accurate” understanding of the human body and what was once traditionally referred to as “the human soul.” This is evidenced by the increasing popularity of the physicalist position on human nature among Christian scholars.[4] In light of contemporary biblical scholarship understood within the context of the most recent neuroscientific evidence, this position argues that there “is no metaphysical element such as a mind or soul or spirit.”[5] Instead, human beings are monadic, allegedly composed of one “part” only—the physical body.[6] Simply put by Nancey Murphy, perhaps the foremost spokesperson for this position within Christian scholarship, we are not “immortal souls temporarily housed in physical bodies” but rather “we are our bodies.”[7] The consequences of such an understanding of the human body for the Church is not insignificant. As Nancey Murphy notes, such an understanding of the human body clearly challenges believers to rethink traditional Christian understandings of God, the Incarnation, the Trinity, salvation, sanctification, and the resurrection – doctrines of primary importance to the faith.[8]
Much of conservative evangelical Christianity in America, from the pulpit to the pew, have found such discussions to be too esoteric and complicated, having little direct relevance or practical value for one’s personal faith in Jesus Christ. Questions concerning the theology of the human body are frequently ignored—until one is forced to consider them out of medical necessity. Then, by default, they are often informed primarily by the conventional wisdom of the prevailing culture. The result has been a chaotic and confused compartmentalized Christian praxis and ethics that attempt to separate matters of faith from matters of the body. Christian praxis in matters of the human body frequently reflects either a Gnostic type dualism that ignores, neglects, or punishes the human body as the enemy of the soul and the repository of sin on the one hand or, on the other, a practical materialism that celebrates the body as the primary determinant of the entirety of life, including addiction, sexuality, emotional state, behavior, spirituality, and well-being (in short, the entirety of our present lives).[9] Stated simply, American evangelical Christians, like many Americans, either neglect health or body matters or idolize and obsess about them.
Nouthetic counselor Elyse Fitzpatrick and Christian Psychiatrist Laura Hendrickson have observed the familiar truism in Christian counseling ministry that “many of us who believe in the Bible are prone to think as materialists do when it comes to our health.”[10] The consequence, as addressed in the Elyse Fitzpatrick and Laura Hendrickson book, Will Medicine Stop the Pain, is an increasing dependency on prescription drugs for the treatment of emotional pain within the evangelical Christian community. On the other hand, Gregg R. Allison contends “that evangelicals at best express an ambivalence toward the human body, and at worst manifest a disregard or contempt for it…many Christians, due to either poor or non-existent teaching on human embodiment, consider their body at best, a hindrance to spiritual maturity, and, at worst, inherently evil or the ultimate source of sin.”
Regardless of where one stands or sits, whether it be the halls of Christian academia, the Christian counselor’s office, or the back pew of a Sunday church service, how one chooses to understand and care for the human body is hardly an issue of secondary or tertiary importance to the Christian faith. The nature of man that God has created after his own image is an embodied nature. The life that God has created, redeemed, and will one day glorify is an embodied one. The way in which God has chosen to most fully reveal His glory to mankind, to save His people, and to glorify Himself is an embodied one, the Word incarnate (Heb 1:2). The call that God has given believers in this present age involves the explicit command to “glorify God in your body,” because “you have been bought with a price” (1 Cor 6:20). The believer’s hope, the consummation of the believer’s salvation, is an embodied hope where we will one day glorify God through the complete transformation by His grace into the likeness of the resurrected incarnate Word. The Christian faith is an embodied faith that does not allow one to separate matters of faith from matters of the body. Consequently, how we choose to understand and care for the human body not only reflects our understanding of the God we worship, in many ways it affects our worship as well. We neglect the understanding of the body God has created for His glory at the expense of the faith we confess and proclaim. How then are we, as twenty-first century Christians, to understand the human body, its meaning, its significance, its function, and its purpose rightly, in a manner that accurately reflects and rightly represents the true image of our God and His glory?
A careful examination of Genesis 1 and 2 demonstrates that our physical bodies were originally good and created for His glory. They are God’s gift to us. They are part of us. They were designed and given to us to help present the image and likeness of God’s glory in our lives. They were given to us – neither to be neglected nor idolized – but to be cared for and stewarded, in submission to the will and Word of our sovereign Creator, for His glory. As common grace, the created world was given by the Word of God to help sustain our bodies (Gen 1:29) in their task to glorify their Creator – though always subject to the Word of God. Such common grace can easily be seen to extend to medicines that include treatments such as vaccines. Certainly the sin of Genesis 3 destroyed and continues to destroy the image of God in both our spirits and our physical bodies. However, the divine design and purpose for our bodies remains unchanged, as well as the biblically informed stewardship we are called to provide for them.
Furthermore, the Gospel does not negate our responsibility of stewarding our bodies and health for the glory of God. Rather, by grace, through faith in Christ, it restores the body to its rightful place as neither god nor monster, but rather as the gift of God for the glory of His grace. In light of this, we would do well to consider Scripture closely as it pertains to the stewardship of our bodies and our health. For man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God (Dt 8:3; Matt 4:4).
[1] Gregg R. Allison, Professor of Christian Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary contends the following: “Regrettably, the church has developed its neglect or rejection of this embodied reality (of human life) because of being negatively influenced by Platonic philosophy. Gregg R. Allison, “Toward a Theology of Human Embodiment” in SBJT 13.2 (2009), 13.
[2] Naturalism is “the twofold view that (1) everything is composed of natural entities—those studied in the sciences (on some versions, the natural sciences)—whose properties determine all the properties of things, persons included (abstracta like possibilia and mathematical objects, if they exist, being constructed of such abstract entities as the sciences allow); and (2) acceptable methods of justification and explanation are continuous, in some sense, with those in science.” Within this view there is no place for the presence or role of the supernatural. Robert Audi, ed., The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 596.
[3] Solomon H. Snyder documents the emergence of this quest through a survey of the works of the following neuroscientists: F.S. Collins, D.J. Lindern, M.R. Trimble, and R.R. Griffiths. Solomon H. Snyder, M.D., D.Sc., “Seeking God in the Brain—Efforts to Localize Higher Brain Functions,” N ENGL J MED 358;1 (January 3,2008): 6-7, www.nejm.org (accessed September 5,2008).
[4] John Cooper provides a brief survey of the leading biblical scholars who hold to this position in whole or in part. They include Joel B. Green, Nancey Murphy, Peter van Inwagen, Lynne Rudder Baker, Kevin Corcoran, and Trenton Merricks among others. John Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate, (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2000), xx-xxiv.
[5] The physicalist position is an ontological monist position that believes the concept of the human soul and ontological dualism (the belief that human beings are composed of two distinct substances or entities, a physical body and an immaterial soul) are largely the product of poor antiquated translation work of anthropological terms found in the Bible and of Platonic eisegesis of the Bible. Nancey Murphy, Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies?, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), ix, 16.
[6] Ibid.,1.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid., 23-30.
[9] Though it may be argued that the prosperity, health and wealth gospel movements as well as much of the charismatic faith-healing movement are an exception to the separation of faith matters from those of the body, much of their doctrine and practice reflect a rampant materialistic view of the body and this present life.
[10] Elyse Fitzpatrick & Laura Hendrickson, MD, define materialism as “the belief that the material world (what we can sense and measure) is all that there is,” that “we consist solely of a body,” and that our thoughts and choices are determined solely by the physical activity of our brains rather than our inner person.” Elyse Fitzpatrick & Laura Hendrickson, MD, Will Medicine Stop the Pain: Finding God’s Healing for Depression, Anxiety, & Other Troubling Emotions, (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2006), 27, 32.
[11] Gregg R. Allison, “Toward a Theology of Human Embodiment” in SBJT 13.2 (2009), 4-5. On a personal and anecdotal note I might add, some of my most difficult patients in seventeen years of family practice, with regards to their ability to cope well and appropriately with their illness, have been evangelical pastors.
