Stimulated by an observation made by theologian NT Wright, I propose a radical change in perspective in respect to addressing the body / soul issue. Here is Wright’s remark:
I believe therefore that a Christian anthropology must necessarily ask, not, what are human beings in themselves, but, what are human beings called to do and be as part of the creator’s design? Not to ask the question that way round, and to think simply about ourselves and what we are, risks embodying, at a methodological level, Luther’s definition of sin: homo incurvatus in se.
For your information, Luther’s latin phrase means “man turned in on himselfâ€.
Wright is making a foundational point, challenging the very way this “soul-body†question gets framed, and therefore addressed. In the 21st century west, we very naturally carve up reality into discrete “objects†– trees, clouds, rocks, etc. Of course, we also concern ourselves with relations between such objects, but our perspective is primarily “object-centricâ€. Consequently, the question of “what is a human person†becomes, more or less, what “parts†might make up the “object†that we call a human. And so, following the Greek tradition, we come up with categories such as “soul†and “bodyâ€.
That’s fine, perhaps, but it is not the only way to proceed. We can also examine the human person not so much as a “thing†seen in relative isolation, but instead as a dynamic relational agent, embedded in the real world, and tightly connected to various aspects of that real world. From the Christian perspective we can safely assert that, notwithstanding the error of believing God will destroy the world, we are called to be involved in the redemption of the created order in its physical dimension, along with other “dimensions†as appropriate. In this respect, we should pay attention to the statement in Revelation 21 about heaven and earth merging (not earth being destroyed and heaven continuing on). This statement is highly instructive – history is on a trajectory to a state where the “spiritual†(as we might say) dimension of heaven will be merged with the “physical†dimension of this present world, presumably eliminating any discontinuity between these two realms in the process.
I suggest that this means that, perhaps, we human beings are on this same trajectory. I have not thought this through at all, but it could actually turn out to be the case that our very “internal architecture is evolving, with any “distinction†between “soul†and “body†dissolving in the process. On this view, there may indeed be a sense in which humans beings come into this world “split up†into parts such as body and soul, but, as we mature in Christ, perhaps these distinctions, which I suggest are negative artefacts of the fall, are gradually erased.
We all too easily opt for the simplicity of static models – it complicates things to imagine that the fundamental structure of our world may actually be changing over time. And yet such a view is eminently Biblical – God is, even now, at work transforming the very fabric of our world. Who is to say that this does not include “putting human beings back togetherâ€.
This is all off-the-cuff speculation, written down in 15 minutes as stimulated by the one sentence from NT Wright (I did not read the rest of the article in which this statement appeared, so he may take things in an entirely different direction). However, the position I am trying to articulate, notwithstanding my previous posts, actually concedes that there may indeed be a “true†dualism in the human person. However, I am also suggesting that this is a “problem that is being fixedâ€, and not a fundamental eternal truth.
