Wonderfully Made E-Book

John W. Kleinig

• Herausgeber: Lexham Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 407

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Why do we have bodies?When it comes to thinking about our bodies, confusion reigns. In our secular age, there has been a loss of the body's goodness, purpose, and end. Many people, driven by shame and idolatry, abuse their body through self-harm or self-improvement. How can we renew our understanding and see our bodies the way God does?In Wonderfully Made, John Kleinig forms a properly biblical theology of our bodies. Through his keen sensitivity to Scripture's witness, Kleinig explains why bodies matter. While sin has corrupted our bodies and how we think of them, God's creation is still good. Thus, our bodies are good gifts. The Son took on a body to redeem our bodies. Kleinig addresses issues like shame, chastity, desire, gender dysphoria, and more, by integrating them into the biblical vision of creation.Readers of Wonderfully Made will not only be equipped to engage in current issues; they will gain a robust theology of the body and better appreciation of God's very good creation.

Leseprobe

WONDERFULLY MADE

A Protestant Theology of the Body

John W. Kleinig

Wonderfully Made: A Protestant Theology of the Body

Copyright 2021 John W. Kleinig

Lexham Press, 1313 Commercial St., Bellingham, WA 98225

LexhamPress.com

You may use brief quotations from this resource in presentations, articles, and books. For all other uses, please write Lexham Press for permission. Email us at [email protected].

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from ESV®Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked RSV Catholic Edition are from the Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1965, 1966 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission.

All rights reserved worldwide.

Print ISBN 9781683594673

Digital ISBN 9781683594680

Library of Congress Control Number 2020950469

Lexham Editorial: Todd Hains, Matthew Boffey, Elliot Ritzema

Cover Design: Joshua Hunt

For my dear wife, Claire,

who by God’s grace has become one flesh and one spirit with me,

and for our dear children,

Louise, Timothy, Hilary, and Paul,

who are flesh of our flesh!

CONTENTS

Abbreviations

Prayer for Life in the Body

1BODY MATTERS

2THE CREATED BODY

3THE REDEEMED BODY

4THE SPIRITUAL BODY

5THE SEXUAL BODY

6THE SPOUSAL BODY

7THE LIVING BODY

Epigraph Sources

Author Index

Subject Index

Scripture Index

ABBREVIATIONS

BoC

The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Edited by Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert. Translated by Charles Arand et al. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000.

LW

Luther’s Works [American Edition]. 82 vols. projected. St. Louis: Concordia; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1955–1986, 2009–.

WA

D. Martin Luthers Werke, Kritische Gesamtausgabe: [Schriften]. 73 vols. Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1883–2009.

PRAYER FOR LIFE IN THE BODY

This order of prayer for our human life in the body invites you to read each chapter in the book as a devotional exercise by yourself. It can also be used by a group in a study of it-with a leader speaking the plain text, and the group the words in bold.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

PSALMODY

O Lord, open my lips,

and my mouth will declare your praise.

Ps 51:15

You formed my inward parts;

you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works.

Ps 139:13–14

Your hands have made and fashioned me;

give me understanding that I may learn your commandments.

Those who fear you shall see me and rejoice,

because I have hoped in your word.

Ps 119:73–74

The word of the Lord is right and true;

he is faithful in all he does.

The Lord loves righteousness and justice;

the earth is full of his unfailing love.

By the word of the Lord were the heavens made,

their starry host by the breath of his mouth.

Let all the earth fear the Lord;

let all the people of the world revere him.

For he spoke, and it came to be;

he commanded, and it stood firm.

May your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord,

even as we put our hope in you.

Ps 33:4–6, 8–9, 22

CONFESSION OF FAITH

God has made us his people through our baptism into Christ. Living together in trust and hope, we confess our faith.

I believe in God the Father Almighty,

maker of heaven and earth.

And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,

who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,

born of the Virgin Mary,

suffered under Pontius Pilate,

was crucified, died, and was buried.

He descended into hell.

The third day he rose again from the dead.

He ascended into heaven

and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty,

and he will come again to judge the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,

the holy catholic church,

the communion of saints,

the forgiveness of sins,

the resurrection of the body,

and the life everlasting. Amen.

PRAYER

Lord, remember us in your kingdom, and teach us to pray:

Our Father who art in heaven;

Hallowed be thy name;

Thy kingdom come;

Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven;

Give us this day our daily bread;

And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those

who trespass against us;

And lead us not into temptation;

But deliver us from evil;

For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory for ever and ever.

Amen.

Matt 6:9–13

Almighty God, I thank you that you sustain me and all creatures by your life-giving breath, and deliver me from death through Jesus, the Word of life. Protect me from all evil, so that I serve you in all that I do and please you in my daily life. Into your hands I commend myself, my body and soul, and all that I possess, and all those who are dear to me; through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord.

Amen.

ENCOURAGEMENT

Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit within you:

whom you have from God.

You are not your own, for you were bought with a price:

So glorify God in your body.

1 Cor 6:19

BENEDICTION

Our help is in the name of the Lord

who made heaven and earth.

Ps 124:8

Let us bless the Lord.

Ps 103:1

Thanks be to God.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and

the love of God and the communion

of the Holy Spirit be with us all.

2 Cor 13:14

Amen.

1

BODY MATTERS

In fact, however, the value of an individual does not lie in him. He is capable of receiving value. He receives it by union with Christ. There is no question of finding for him a place in the living temple which will do justice to his inherent value and give scope to his natural idiosyncrasy. The place was there first. The man was created for it. He will not be himself till he is there. We shall be true and everlasting and really divine persons only in Heaven, just as we are, even now, coloured bodies only in the light.

—C. S. Lewis

The slogans on two sweatshirts worn by young women recently caught my attention. The first was “My body! My choice!” The second was “Your body may be a temple, but mine’s an amusement park.” Both sum up how people commonly now regard their bodies. Since it belongs to them and only to them, they may do as they please with it. Therefore they use it for their own amusement in pursuit of physical pleasure for themselves apart from God and any higher purpose in life.

What are we to make of our bodies? That is not a theoretical question for idle speculation, something for philosophers to consider. It is a practical matter that determines the course of our lives. Even if we rarely think about our bodies, our opinion of them and attitude toward them subconsciously govern how we live and act every moment of our lives. Our beliefs about our bodies are always in play because our bodies are part and parcel of what we are. Wherever we are, there our body is with us. Whatever we do, our body does.

But unless something bad happens to me, I mostly take my body for granted, like the air I breathe. Even though it is my constant companion, I seldom consider how I relate to it and what it is meant to be. Yet it is, or should be, obvious how important it is to me and the people around me. It locates me in a particular place at a particular time with particular people in my particular society, family, marriage, and workplace. I am born with my body and die when it can no longer sustain me. The pattern of my life as a whole involves me with my body from childhood to adolescence, marriage to parenthood, employment to retirement, old age to death. My body also marks the daily rhythm of my life with waking and sleeping, dressing and undressing, working and resting from work, eating and drinking, engaging in sexual intercourse and disengaging from it. It governs how I interact with others and how they interact with me. I experience the world around me through it. I live with my body and do everything with it. My human life is, most obviously and simply, life in the body.

Yet I did not make my body; it was given to me and remains given to me as the foundation for my life here on earth. It is never apart from me, nor am I ever apart from it for as long as I live here.

My body is equally important for my life as a Christian. Just as I live my entire earthly life in my human family, my spiritual life in God’s family involves my body from its earthly beginning to its final, heavenly destination. My life in Christ is based on a physical event, my baptism. The washing of physical water accompanied by the speaking of certain words joined my body with the body of the risen Lord Jesus, just as the rite of marriage joined my body to my wife’s. Jesus now interacts with me physically with his spoken word that I hear with my physical ears, his audible word that animates me with his Holy Spirit and makes me a saint. Jesus also gives himself to me physically in his Holy Supper. There I receive his life-giving body and blood with my mouth and in my whole body. Through his body and blood, he unites me physically and spiritually with himself and all other Christians. He also calls and equips me to serve him bodily—that is, with my actual body and its individual members. So, paradoxically, my spiritual life, the life that is created and sustained by the Holy Spirit, is always lived in the body. It does not take me away from my body or occur apart from it. Rather, it takes me ever further and deeper into bodily life and into fuller embodiment as a human being. It makes me at home in my body as I live here on earth.

All that makes scant sense unless we understand the spiritual life in biblical terms. The biblical understanding of human spirituality differs radically from views commonly and rather vaguely held. Most people see the spiritual as the opposite of the physical and material. Thus, the human spirit is identified either with the conscious mind and its thoughts, emotions, and self-awareness, or with the immaterial soul, the disembodied spirit, of every living person. As such, it can exist and works best apart from the body.

In contrast, the biblical view is that what is spiritual has to do with the Holy Spirit. My spirit is what makes me a person rather than a thing or an animal, a living person animated by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit that gives personal life to every human soul, and eternal life to every believer. The Holy Spirit makes us and our deeds spiritual through faith in Jesus Christ. As Martin Luther says, “The Spirit is whatever is done in us through the Spirit.”1

Since the spiritual life is produced by the Holy Spirit for people with bodies, Christian spirituality is embodied piety. We human beings are not just spirits, like the angels, nor animated bodies, like the animals, but are embodied spirits, or, if you will, spiritual bodies. We do not just have bodies; we are bodies. They are not just what we are as people but an essential part of who we are. That is why the body is so important. It has been designed to be a temple of the Holy Spirit rather than an amusement park. Like the human mind, it is meant to live in harmony with God and his Holy Spirit. It was created for eternal life with God, not merely temporal life on earth. No matter how damaged it may actually be, every human body is designed for perfection in eternity.

HIGH REGARD

It is true that some vain people overrate their bodies. Like Narcissus in Greek mythology, they admire themselves. Their bodies serve their own self-glorification. Since their sight is turned away from the world and the people around them, they see nothing but themselves. They confuse the way they look with what they are and identify themselves with their appearance. Despite their self-regard their body is actually underrated, because it is treated as an object, a thing in itself apart from the person and its relationship with others. They idolize their bodies.

Yet it seems to me that most people do not regard their bodies highly enough. They underrate and despise their bodies. Because they are in thrall to the image of an ideal body, the body beautiful, they do not appreciate how amazing and wonderful they actually are. They belittle their bodies for their apparent idiosyncrasies and supposed imperfections. They fail to see how the value of the body does not merely lie in its total physical arrangement but in its personal use with all its parts. Each body is like a violin made by Stradivarius. In its appearance a Stradivarius is no more attractive than any other musical instrument. It comes into its own when it is used by a master musician to play the piece of music that brings out the best in it. So too with our bodies! We should hold them in high regard for their wonderful construction and their amazing potential, potential that is realized when they are used in the right way to serve others and glorify God.

Sadly, our society as a whole does not know what to make of the body. People disagree on what it is, what it is meant to do, and how it is to be regarded. That is not new. The human body has always been a matter of contention, most of all with regard to its sexual character—perhaps never more so than in Western societies today, in which some of the sharpest social, moral, and religious conflicts have to do with the body! Think of the disagreements in our society over sexuality and gender, marriage and divorce, same-sex intercourse and same-sex marriage, artificial reproduction and genetic engineering, cosmetic surgery and gender reassignment, pornography and voyeurism, sexual abuse and prostitution, abortion and euthanasia, overeating and malnutrition. Think, too, of disagreements in the church over creation and evolution, the incarnation of God’s Son and his physical resurrection, the ministry of the church and its use of spoken words and physical objects like water, bread, and wine as the means of the Spirit, the resurrection of the body and bodily participation in eternal life with the Triune God. All these conflicts stem, in large part, from confusion about the body.

Popular culture shows that our society seems to be in two minds about the human body. On the one hand, it is obsessed with the physical body and its health. Our happiness and wellbeing seemingly depend on what we eat and how we feel, how fit we are and how sexually active we are, how we look and what we can do. Since the condition for a good life is a fit, healthy, attractive body, people assess themselves and their bodies by comparison with the images of the socially sanctioned ideal bodies that they see on screen and in print. My ideal self, the person I would like to be, must match that ideal body. Yet that ideal is never fixed. It changes as fashions change. What’s more, makeup and photographic trickery ensure that no one ever actually measures up to that artificial ideal. Besides that, even the best body is marred and scarred; it becomes sick and unwell; it ages and dies. No actual body is ever perfect in appearance or in health. No body is ever good enough; it never measures up to what it should be like. Bodily perfection is in fact an illusion, an impossible dream.

On the other hand, an obsession with the body coexists with contempt for the body. Surveys show that most people are so unhappy with their bodies that they would readily trade them in for something better and more attractive. Since they are unhappy with themselves, they project their dissatisfaction onto their bodies and attempt to get rid of its blemishes by the pursuit of bodily self-improvement with diet and exercise, makeup and dress, cosmetic surgery and decoration with jewelry and tattoos. When these efforts fail to deliver the desired outcome, they despise their bodies and treat them harshly as if to punish them for their failure.

In disappointment, more and more of our contemporaries who feel trapped in their bodies try to escape by dissociating themselves from them. Some who have been hurt physically switch off their emotions and live in their minds. Others try to achieve a state of emotional ecstasy through intoxication, music, or spiritual possession. Still others deliberately practice a kind of deep meditation that seeks to transcend the body and reach a state of higher consciousness. It is also true that many Christians who feel uneasy about their bodies reduce the Christian faith to the pursuit of theological knowledge or the cultivation of their own subjective spirituality. Oddly, the focus on the body as the be-all and end-all of human life can result in the unhealthy embrace of a disembodied kind of spirituality.

So neither of these approaches regards the human body highly enough. Both fail to appreciate it properly.

THE ANIMATED BODY

Up to this point I have quite deliberately refrained from explaining how the human body is connected with the mind and the soul, one’s sense of self as a person rather than just a thing. But now an explanation is in order to avoid possible misunderstanding. The connection of the human mind with the body became a central issue in Greek philosophy, and centuries later it remains still pertinent. Like the Greek philosophers, many modern Christians reduce the mind to its cognitive powers and identify it with the human soul. This dualistic view of a person dissociates the mind with its thoughts and judgments from the body with its senses, passions, and desires. Thus, even though modern science shows that the mind cannot be separated from the body, the human mind is still commonly identified with the soul as the spiritual part of a person and as a separate entity from the body. So, for many people, embryos and mentally disabled people are not held to be persons because they are not fully sentient entities with self-consciousness.

But that is not how the human body is regarded in the Scriptures. It could be said that Scripture speaks about embodied minds and mindful bodies. In fact, the Hebrew Old Testament has no terms that correspond exactly to “body” and “mind” in English. The Old Testament speaks more generally about the “flesh” of a person. So does the New Testament. Although sometimes it uses the Greek word for the body in a more technical sense (that is, the human body), the same word is often translated “flesh” to mean not merely the physical body (for example, Gal 2:20) but the sinful self that is opposed to God’s Spirit (for example, Rom 8:5–7).

The New Testament occasionally uses nous, a Greek word that approximates what we now call the mind (for example, Rom 12:2). The Greeks regarded it as the organ for physical, mental, moral, and spiritual perception. But the Old Testament has no technical term for the mind as we know it. Instead, it regards the heart, the central physical organ of the human body, as the seat of what we now call the mind, much as we now locate the mind in the brain. The heart is regarded as the organ for perception and understanding, thought and emotion, reflection and meditation, memory and enjoyment, imagination and calculation, invention and action, desire and volition. The symbolic use of this physical term presents us with a unitary, synthetic view of the whole person. In this view, the whole body with its respective organs is not only involved in perception and action but also in all mental and emotional activity. So when we think, we speak to ourselves, and when we speak, we think aloud for others to know what we are thinking. We have mindful bodies that interact physically and mentally with the world around them, receptive bodies that need eyes to see and ears to hear and a heart to understand what is presented to them (Deut 29:4; Isa 6:9–10). Thus, for instance, when someone speaks to me, my brain interprets what I hear. So if that part of the brain that deals with hearing is damaged, I can no longer make sense of the sounds that strike my otherwise unimpaired eardrum.

Just as the human mind is associated with the heart of a person in the Scriptures, so human souls are connected with the throat and its breath. Thus, “soul” is the word in Hebrew (nephesh) and Greek (psychē) for any animate creature, for animals and people who breathe and remain alive as long as they continue to breathe. They die when they no longer breathe as well as when the heart stops beating. Their soul is their life-breath. Thus, the word for soul is also the word for human life (for example, Mark 8:35–36). A human soul is an animate, living person. People do not just have souls; they are souls.

This commonsense way of thinking is carried from the Old Testament over into the New Testament. It has the same holistic anthropology, the same view of the whole person. It employs a range of terms to describe human life from different points of view, different aspects not meant to exclude each other. Thus, when Jesus teaches his disciples about the necessities for physical life on earth in Matthew 6:25, he considers them physically from two complementary points of view, both as persons with living souls and as persons with living bodies. But when he teaches them about death in Matthew 10:28–29, he distinguishes the soul from the body. Similarly, Paul identifies the heart with the mind (Phil 4:7) and the mind with the conscience (Titus 1:15) as complementary aspects of a person. He also distinguishes the body from the mind when he discusses congregational behavior in Romans 12:1–2, and he differentiates among the body, soul, and spirit of God’s people when he teaches them about their total sanctification for eternal life with God in 1 Thessalonians 5:23.

This view of the whole person, coupled with the use of the same terms for different entities—like “soul,” “flesh,” and “body” all referring to the life of a person and to a person’s self—can make it hard for us to fathom exactly what we mean when we talk about the body. Take, for instance, Paul’s use of the phrase “the body of flesh.” In Colossians 1:22 it describes the physical body of Jesus, but in 2:11 it describes the sinful nature of all Adam’s descendants. Similarly, in Colossians 2:18 “the mind of the flesh” does not refer to the physical mind but to the sinful mentality that is hostile to God and concerned only with its own spiritual self-advancement.

Human beings do not possess a body or a mind; they are both bodies and minds. They cannot be reduced to either of these. Every person is not just a body or a mind, but both. And yet they are also more than both. As people, they are always much more than self-conscious bodies or embodied minds. Their personal nature and identity, their souls, transcend both their bodies and their minds. So, for example, those who suffer from Alzheimer’s disease, or lie unconscious in a coma, are still persons, even though they have lost much of their physical and mental ability. What’s more, even though we change physically and mentally in the course of our lives, we still remain the same person. In fact, these changes actually establish and confirm our continuous identity.

Even though we all experience ourselves as the same person for the whole of our conscious lives, our self, our soul, remains a mystery to us. We do not invent our own selves and construct who we are. Our self, our identity, is something given to us together with our bodies to distinguish us from other bodies, and with our minds to make us aware of ourselves as persons, active agents in the story of our lives.

The mystery of our personal identity is understood in three ways in the New Testament. First, the body is distinguished from the soul. Jesus explains it in these terms in Matthew 10:28: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both body and soul in hell.” He therefore distinguishes the soul from the body and teaches that while the body can be killed physically here on earth, the soul cannot be killed even if the body is killed. It survives the death of the body (Heb 10:39; 1 Pet 1:9; 3:19; Rev 6:9; 20:4). Only God, the Creator and Judge of humanity, can destroy both body and soul in hell. Thus, Jesus asserts that those who have died are still alive to God (Luke 20:38). Thus, my animate human soul animates my body and my mind.

Second, the human soul is associated with the spirit and yet distinguished from it (Heb 4:12). It is the self-conscious, inner self of people in contrast with their physical flesh (2 Cor 7:1; Col 2:5), or their body as their outer self (1 Cor 5:3–5; 7:34). The living spirit of a believer, which has been created and is kept physically alive by God’s Spirit, has also been recreated and revived for eternal life with God by his Spirit. It belongs to the spiritual world, together with the spirits of those who have died, angels and demons, the Holy Spirit and Satan, and God the Father of all spirits (Heb 12:9). At death, the spirit of a person returns to its Creator (Eccl 12:7; Luke 23:46; Acts 7:59; cf. Luke 8:55). Thus, in Hebrews 12:23, the saints who have died and are now part of the heavenly congregation are described as “the spirits of the righteous made perfect.” Thus, God’s Spirit animates my spirit with temporal and eternal life in order to enliven me physically and mentally.

Third, our personal identity is fixed. In Luke 10:20 Jesus teaches that the names of his disciples are written in heaven (see also Phil 4:3; Heb 12:23; Rev 3:5; 21:27). We do not name ourselves. Our parents confer our identity on us by giving us our proper names. They make us who we are. Thus, I am John. If my name is taken away from me, I lose my identity. If I change my name, I change my identity. Ultimately, God gives me my name so that he can call on me by name, introduce himself personally to me, and interact personally with me (Isa 43:1). He did not just give me my personal name, my Christian name, when I was baptized; he also registered it in heaven together with all those who belong to him. He thereby made me a member of his family and a citizen of heaven. As long as my name is written in the book of life, I remain a living person and an heir of eternal life (Phil 4:3; Rev 3:5; 21:27). No matter how much I change, God always considers me the same person in time and in eternity.

WONDERFULLY MADE!

Our world has many living wonders, many ordinary creatures that are all quite extraordinary. This array of wonders ranges from a simple cell to the supremely complex human body. From every point of view, each embodied person is the most amazing visible being on earth. Our human bodies, linked as they are to the whole web of life on earth and the life of the living God, are indeed “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps 139:14).

Yet the more we examine our bodies and learn about them, the more we discover how little we actually understand them and their complexity. Our vision of ourselves is always partial, incomplete, and one-dimensional, often a reflection of how others see us and of what they tell us about ourselves. We never see ourselves directly, or fully, either by looking at ourselves in a mirror or by thinking about what has happened to us. We only ever see bits and pieces, moments and episodes, in the story of our physical lives on earth—mere snapshots at various stages of our lives, rather than a complete video of our entire embodied life from all points of view.

There is only one who sees us fully at each moment and entirely in our whole existence. He sees us physically and mentally, personally and spiritually. The only one who has an accurate vision of us is the living God, the author and director of our bodily lives. That’s the message of Psalm 139. He is the only one who knows my heart (1 Kgs 8:39; Ps 44:21; Acts 1:24; 15:8). He knows how I think and what I feel; he knows what I am and why I act as I do. He is “acquainted with all my ways” (Ps 139:3). Even though I cannot see him physically, he sees me completely (Ps 139:1–12). Thus, the royal singer of this psalm not only praises God for his wonderful creation but also praises God for God’s even more wonderful vision of him (Ps 139:13–18). He pictures his whole life from the moment of conception as a process of waking up from a deep sleep to discover God’s presence with him:

For you formed my inward parts;

you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works;

my soul knows it very well.

My frame was not hidden from you,

when I was being made in secret,

intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes saw my unformed substance;

in your book were written, every one of them,

the days that were formed for me,

when as yet there was none of them.

How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!

How vast is the sum of them!

If I would count them, they are more than sand.

I awake and I am still with you.

The eyes of God see what is hidden from human eyes. They see the whole life of each human body from the womb to the tomb. God’s thoughts and purposes, his intentions and plans, are precious to the psalmist, because they encompass his entire physical and mental life. God does not program and script its entire course with little or no room for improvisation; he follows his outline and purpose for it as he works with each person in staging it. Like a producer who devises a play together with his actors, he supervises its enactment.

But unlike most dramatists, God is also the main actor and allows for improvisation in the play. He therefore interacts in a hidden way with the characters that he has scripted. As the creative author and active producer in the drama of our bodily lives, he sees and understands us fully in all the dimensions of our existence. Most amazingly, by speaking with us he shares his vision of us with us, as well as his plan to disclose himself to each of us. His thoughts are precious to us, because he wants to bring us to himself on the everlasting way that leads from earth to heaven (Ps 139:18, 24). Thus, our vision of our bodies comes from his vision of us. He wants us to revise our self-vision according to his vision. That process of revision can only come from him and through him.

The body matters much more than we usually imagine it does. It matters because it locates us in time and space here on earth. It matters because we live in it and with it. It matters because through it we interact with the world around us, the people who coexist with us, and the living God who keeps us physically alive in it. It matters even though it is so fragile and so easily damaged. It matters even though we rebel against our Creator and abuse our fellow creatures on earth. It matters even though it is finite and doomed to die. Most of all, it matters to us because it matters so much to God. He is the supreme philanthropist, the lover of humanity (Titus 3:4).

The sacred Scriptures show us how much the human body matters to God, and why. From Genesis to Revelation, Scripture paints two pictures of bodily life on earth. On the one hand, it shows us how God regards the human body, the body that he creates in his image, redeems by the incarnation of his Son, and sanctifies for life with him through the Holy Spirit. On the other hand, it also shows us how completely it has been corrupted by rebellion against God, how badly it has been misused to damage other people and the world around it, and how tragically it is doomed to die. Yet it would be wrong to give equal weight to both these portrayals, for the bright vision of its glory far outweighs the gray vision of its misery. Thus, in 2 Corinthians 4:17, Paul exclaims that each momentary affliction of the body is preparing us for “an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” with anything that we have yet experienced.

THE THEOPHANIC BODY

Like a composer who values all musical instruments in an orchestra as well as their skillful players, God prizes our bodies and us as embodied people for what he plans to accomplish through us individually and corporately. Since he has made each of us and the whole of humanity in his image, the value of the body does not depend on its worth to the person who owns it; it does not come from its social status or usefulness, nor is it derived only from its place and function in the natural world. The worth of the body is conferred by its divine Creator. The triune God designed it for himself and for participation in his own eternal life. He made it as it is so that he could give himself and his gifts bodily to people on earth and work with them in caring bodily for others and the world, which is their natural habitat. He designed it so that he could show himself bodily to other embodied people and give them bodily access to himself by his theophany, his physical appearance to them in Jesus.

The human body was made to bridge two realms: the invisible, eternal realm of God and the visible, temporal realm of his creation. Created as they were in God’s image, all human bodies were meant to be holy even as God is holy. Thus, human bodies do not just belong to this world, but also to the eternal world of God. They are meant to reflect the triune God bodily in their life and behavior, all in keeping with their own unique characteristics and according to their unique calling. Each person has been made to represent him partially in their bodily life on earth. None of them represents God fully except Jesus; he is not just a man made in God’s image, but he is God’s image, the visible likeness of the invisible God (2 Cor 4:4; Col 1:14).

As a result of human rebellion against God, people serve God poorly and badly. They are far from the glory of God (Rom 3:23). Like rooms with cracked and dirty windows, they do not let the light of God shine in them and out through them. Like a damaged and mistuned musical instrument, they eke out an off-pitch tune. They are not as they should be, nor do they any longer function properly. They have lost their access to God and live corruptly apart from him.

But through God’s Son, who took on a human body to reclaim us bodily for fellowship with God the Father, our bodies once again become what they were meant to be. By our faith in Jesus and union with him, our bodies share in his holiness by being filled with the Holy Spirit. They become temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19). As shrines where God resides, they share in his hidden glory and display it by word and deed to the world. So, through our bodily union with Jesus, we are filled with all the fullness of God (Eph 3:19). We glorify God and honor him with our bodies (1 Cor 6:20). Through him our bodies once again become what they were meant to be: agents of God and instruments by which he shows himself and gives of himself to other people on earth. By their union with Jesus they become theophanic; they manifest God to people on earth. As disciples of Jesus and recipients of his Spirit, we exhibit the grace of God the Father bodily in the course of our earthly lives. As blameless, innocent, and unblemished children of God, we are enabled to “shine as lights” in a dark and crooked world (Phil 2:15). What greater honor could be conferred on us and our bodies than that?

So then, the value of each body is not inherent to it, that is, does not come from itself. It has its worth from God and receives its full worth, its glory, from its union with Christ. Each human body was made to be part of his body. Or, to change the picture, each body was crafted to be a living stone, set—together with and upon Jesus—in its proper place in God’s holy temple (1 Pet 2:5). Each human body has its proper place there with God. It will not come into full view and be itself until it is there. Only there will it be as it was meant to be, just as our bodies are, even now, visible and colored only in the light.

IN PRAISE OF THE BODY

Some years ago, a prominent Christian journalist addressed a conference for pastors here in Australia. His topic was how best to communicate the Christian faith and a Christian worldview to the cultural movers and shakers who had nothing but disdain for Christianity, to opinionated critics who were, all too often, biblically ignorant and theologically illiterate. He observed that Christians often reinforced their contempt for Christianity by attacking public immorality and lobbying politicians to impose Christian morality on the whole of society by the prohibition of abortion, euthanasia, same-sex intercourse, and same-sex marriage. That project has, in fact, proved to be rather counterproductive, as it has led to counter-legislation to sanction these measures, as well as the use of popular media to cast them in a positive light and depict Christians as angry, self-righteous killjoys.

In contrast with that rather self-righteous, censorious stance, he advocated a positive approach that was neither naively optimistic nor cynically pessimistic. He noted that the Christian faith and Christian moral teaching are best communicated positively, by providing an attractive vision of what is right and good and true, a theological vision of the beauty of physical human life and of the world as God’s creation, an appealing vision of the beauty of marriage and sexual intercourse between husband and wife, a persuasive vision of the beauty of sexual chastity and marital faithfulness—and all of that personally by example, rather than by argument! Such a vision is best communicated physically in word and deed, image and reality, art and life.

I must say that I agree with him. It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness, as it’s been said. The negative, somewhat distorted vision of the body needs to be countered by a positive, rightly ordered vision of it in its beauty, no matter how flawed our bodies may be. As Paul says in Philippians 4:8, “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is chaste, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, there is anything worthy of praise, think of these things.” That is what I want to do in this study; that is what I want its readers to do as they read what I have written.

I am sure that this is the right approach to our Christian consideration of the human body. Presently, we are confronted with so much physical, social, moral, and spiritual ugliness that it is easy for us to be enraged and deranged by it. As we consider how badly the body is used and abused, we can all too easily side with the cynics rather than the angels. But if we listen to what God has to say about it, we can see it as he sees it, both in its potential, eternal glory and in its actual, present misery. Thus, the view of the human body that will be sketched out in the following chapters comes from God’s word. It is not based on my own observations but on the sacred Scriptures, as they throw light on what we could not otherwise see with our human eyes unless they were enlightened by God’s Spirit. I will not use God’s word to critique the abuse of the body but to provide a positive theological vision of its creation by God, its redemption from corruption by Jesus, and its renovation by the Holy Spirit.

MY POINT OF VIEW

This book is a pastoral-theological meditation written from a Lutheran perspective. Its purpose is to consider the body theologically and anthropologically in light of what God says about it in his word, and to contribute some all-too-little-known insights from the classical Lutheran tradition for the ongoing ecumenical discussion of this topic.

Two convictions motivate me in this reflection on the human body. On the one hand, I am convinced that we Christians will not be heard and heeded by our critics in our teaching of various aspects of bodily life unless we paint an attractive picture of it in its potential and actual beauty. To be sure, that beauty is not always obvious and is seldom self-evident, even when we get some glimpses of its splendor. It is, in fact, mostly hidden from human sight. Its hidden beauty is seen most clearly and accurately in the light of God’s word. On the other hand, I am also convinced that abstract arguments and reasoned explanations, no matter how good they are, cannot inculcate a bright vision of its true beauty. God’s Spirit-filled word alone can do that by enlightening our imagination; it alone has the power to heal our broken bodies and make us truly at home with ourselves, God, and others in our bodies. This is a lifelong process, for we shall see our bodies in their true light only when we have become like him in every way and see him as he is; then when we see him as he is, we shall see ourselves fully reflected in him (1 John 3:2).

This book considers the human body theologically as God’s creation, so that we may regard it as he does and treat it as he desires. It is, if you like, a theological rhapsody on the body—a written reflection in praise of the human body, meant to appeal to the imagination and evoke a vision of its divinely given splendor. More correctly, it is written in praise of the triune God who has created the human body to reflect his glory, rescues it from death and destruction, and makes it holy. Thus, the next three chapters will consider the body from those three points of view. Then, after that, the last two chapters will consider the sexual character of the body in the light of its creation, redemption, and sanctification at the expense of other possible applications, since sexuality is such a current, controversial topic in our society. Each of the first three main chapters will conclude with a pastoral section on how best to practice the chapter’s teaching.

Every human body, no matter how plain it may appear or even how disabled it may be, is destined for eternal glory. This glory is mostly hidden from human sight and only ever partially seen by those who have eyes to see it; it is a far greater glory than anything any human eye has seen or mind has yet imagined (1 Cor 2:9–10). Already now, God sees each body as it will be in eternity. He looks beyond outward appearances and sees the hidden person of the heart that is beautiful and precious in his sight (1 Pet 3:4). We are therefore challenged to see them as God sees them and regard them as he regards them. More than that, since every human body is destined for eternal glory, we would do well to take good care of our bodies. We need to treat them wisely and use them well because God values them so highly. Since our bodies matter so very much, what we do with them matters equally so. Every human body is, indeed, somebody.

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THE CREATED BODY

As a human being a person is a whole, not a body without a spirit or a spirit without a body.… Thus, the whole unitary person is the object of all God’s acts from the bestowal of dominion over the earth to the resurrection of the dead and the end of the world … nobody acts with just one part of the self. When somebody thinks, that person actually thinks with the body, and every bodily function is also at the same time a function of the soul and the spirit.

—A. F. C. Vilmar

We cannot appreciate the complexity, beauty, and mystery of the human body unless we realize that it is given to us. We do not make bodies; they are made for us. They are provided for us with all their main characteristics. We receive them as a gift. But from whom, or what?

Our bodies are obviously made from the physical and biological material that is provided for them in the natural world. In that respect our bodies do not differ in kind from the animals that live on earth with us. Yet we do not actually get our bodies from the natural world; we inherit them from our parents, our mother and father, together with the unique genetic codes that determine so much of what we are and what we can be. We receive our bodies from our ancestors.

But the mystery remains! Who, or what, gives me my body through my parents? While our bodies could perhaps have just been developed, long ago, by an impersonal natural process in an amazing series of unlikely accidents, the most likely and satisfactory answer is that they, like the whole world, were created by some supernatural being. By rational reflection we may then infer that our bodies were created, but we cannot infer who made them. That can only be disclosed by our bodies’ supernatural creator or by other supernatural beings who witnessed their creation.

Jesus teaches that this is so! Paraphrasing Genesis 1:27 and 2:24, he asserts this momentous truth about a husband and his wife in Mark 10:6–8: “From the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh.” When Jesus speaks of the beginning, he alludes to Genesis 1:1 and its declaration that God created the whole cosmos. We therefore receive our male or female bodies from God through our parents and ancestors, going all the way back to the creation of the first man and woman. Their creation is both an initial act in primordial time and a foundational act that lasts for all time. Their creation is also our creation. Here is how Luther explains it: