What really set Christianity apart in the ancient world was the incarnation—the claim that the Most High God had himself entered into the realm of matter, taking on a physical body.  In Gnosticism, the highest deity would have nothing to do with the material world. By contrast, the Christian message is that the transcendent God has broken into history as a baby born in Bethlehem.  The incarnation is genuinely physical, happening at a particular time and in a particular geographical location. In the days of the early church, this was Christianity’s greatest scandal.

What is the biblical response to the secular moral revolution?  Let’s start by addressing the two-level body/person dualism itself.

We must start by expressing compassion for people trapped in a dehumanizing and destructive view of the body.  The two-domain worldview is ‘above all an attack on the body,’ writes Catholic theologian Michael Waldstein. We must therefore respond with a biblical defense of the body to heal the alienation between body and person.  The starting point is a biblical philosophy of nature. The Bible proclaims the profound value and dignity of the material realm—including the human body—as the handiwork of a loving God. That’s why biblical morality places great emphasis on the fact of human embodiment.  Respect for the person is inseparable from respect for the body. God could have chosen to make us like the angels—spirits without bodies. He could have created a spiritual realm for us to float around in. Instead, he created us with material bodies and a material universe to live in.  Why? Clearly God values the material dimensions and wants us to value it as well.

Scripture treats body and soul as two sides of the same coin.  The inner life of the soul is expressed through the outer life of the body.  This is highlighted in through the parallelism characteristic of Hebrew poetry in the Psalms:

“My soul thirsts for you, my flesh yearns for you.” (Ps. 63:1)

“Our soul has sunk down into the dust; our body cleaves to the earth.” (Ps. 44:25)

“Keep [my words] in the midst of your heart.  For they are life to those who find them and health to all their body.” (Prov. 4:21-22)

“When I kept silent about [refused to repent of] my sin, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long.” (Ps. 32:3)

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