The Doctrine of Man (part 4)

The last thing that I wanted to share with you was something that I think we’ve all seen in the news this week, and that has been this remarkable outcry over the Pope’s remarks with respect to Islam.

I have here a copy of the Pope’s speech that he gave at the University of Regensburg in Germany. I want to read to you some of this speech so that you can see exactly what he said and the context of it.

What is important to understand here, I think, is that the present Pope, Joseph Ratzinger, was a German university professor and theologian earlier in his career. He taught at the University. So this talk that he gives at the University is entitled “Faith, Reason, and the University: Memories and Reflections.”[1] There is a certain nostalgia very evident in this as he talks about what it means to him to come back to the University there in Regensburg, and to address the faculty. He recalls the days when he was teaching, and the collegiality that he enjoyed. It is quite a personal reminiscence about the role of faith and reason at the University.

I want to pick up here in the opening part of his speech where he says,

His basic point is that in the university community it has been traditionally accepted that the question of the existence of God was one to be explored by the use of reason and that what Christian thinkers had to say about this subject was part of the dialogue.

He goes on to say,

What a great name for this emperor! Paleologus – it means “old word.” Here is this emperor, Manuel II Paleologus, the Byzantine emperor – that is the eastern end of the old Roman Empire now centered in Constantinople, modern-day Istanbul. This is a dialogue that apparently took place in the army barracks in Ankara in modern-day Turkey. In this dialogue was the emperor Manuel II,

So Constantinople was under siege by the Islamic armies and this dialogue was conducted during the course of this siege.

I thought, “Wow, this connects right with our class” because we are talking about the image of God that man is, and he says the dialogue ranges over that topic among others.

He wants to pick out one particular part of this dialogue between Manuel II and this Persian Islamic scholar, and it is pertinent to faith and reason.[2] He says,

I thought the Pope knows his Qur’an. He understands that there are portions in the Qur’an that are very irenic, very peaceful, about the relationship between Muslims and the so-called “people of the Book” (Jews and Christians who follow the Bible). These are these early portions when Mohammed was still in the minority – when he was still a persecuted prophet of monotheism and had no power and no influence, and in particularly no troops. He says this is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat.

So what the emperor is saying is there is a difference between the soul and the body, and faith is something that springs from the soul, not from the body. Therefore, violence against the body is irrelevant to bringing about true faith. To quote a modern-day saying, a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. Genuine faith must be wrought, he says, by reasonable argument – by giving good reasons for faith. Therefore persecution of the body – violence, and particularly threats of death – could only promote a kind of external conformity, but it won’t win the genuine consent of the heart (of the soul) to produce true faith.

Now the Pope goes on to say,

It is self-evident that to act contrary to reason is to act contrary to God’s nature. The emperor had learned that from his heritage of Greek philosophy.

On the Muslim’s view, God’s will trumps everything, even his own nature. He could command that we worship other gods rather than him, and that would become our moral obligation. He could lie to us and act contrary to his own nature. This is just completely incompatible with Christian thinking.

The Pope goes on to say,

I thought this was a learned and intelligent and remarkable statement about the fact that we, as Christians, believe that it belongs to man’s nature to be a rational being because we are created in the nature of God who is himself the supreme Logos, the supreme reason. Therefore violence in the name of promoting faith is just contrary to reason. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t win true faith. This is starkly in contrast with the Islamic view of God which sees God as so transcendent, so beyond reason and rationality, that he even could command logical contradictions like that we should worship other gods rather than him or command idolatry.

What the Pope was focusing here is on a profound difference between these two religions in their concept of God, and how that works itself out in this very practical expression of violence in the propagation of religion, which is condemned by Christianity but endorsed by Islam.

What is, of course, amazing – it makes you shake your head in wonder – is that the Islamic response to this – anger and indignation and offense at the Pope’s words that would accuse them of using violence to spread their faith – is to react with violence! What do they do? They burn the Pope in effigy! They take images of the Pope and burn him in effigy. Then I got a report from the AP that two churches in the West Bank have now been firebombed. According to the Associated Press, it says “Two West Bank Christian churches in Palestine (Nablus) were hit by firebombs early Saturday and a group claiming responsibility said it was protesting Pope Benedict XXVI’s remarks about Islam.” This is how you refute the Pope – by firebombing a Greek Orthodox and an Anglican church in Palestine. Incredible. It would be funny if it weren’t so serious, so tragic. I just heard on the news this morning that a nun in Mogadishu in Somalia has been murdered. They are saying that this is connected, again, with protest over the Pope’s words. Some poor nun has actually been killed as a protest on the part of these Muslims against the Pope saying that Islam promotes violence in the spread of religion. Absolutely incredible.[4]

As I’ve said in the class before, I think that this struggle that we are seeing is the great clash of the 21^st century. Just as in the second half of the 20^th century the great ideological clash was between Marxism and democracy that was ultimately won in the Cold War, I think that in this century the great ideological clash is between Islam and the Western democratic ideal. We find ourselves locked in this incredible and titanic struggle today.

[Dr. Craig then talks about a class someone else is teaching on Islam and Christianity in his church and encourages his students to attend it.]

START DISCUSSION

Student: [inaudible]

Dr. Craig: The whole speech is brilliant. When I read it I thought, “Lord, why don’t our Protestant evangelical spokesmen speak with this kind of intelligence and depth?” It is very, very impressive. This present Pope is a pretty impressive guy, I think.

Student: [inaudible]

Dr. Craig: That is what I thought. That is what I said to Jan. I said, “Ratzinger is charting a different course than the wishy-washy John Paul II who was kind of this broad inclusivist.” I saw one Vatican spokesman who had said, in the aftermath of all this outcry, the Pope knew what the reaction would be when he gave these remarks. And I thought, yeah, he’s not stupid. He knew what was going to happen. Although he has said he is sorry that so many have been offended – as wives know, that kind of mealy mouth apology doesn’t cut any mustard. “I’m sorry you are offended.” What does that mean? He didn’t retract any of his remarks, nor could he. They are theologically sound. They are based in Scripture and reason.

Student: [inaudible]

Dr. Craig: I have to say that was my impression after sitting in on that class Wednesday night. I just thought, “This is really scary. This is frightening.” As I say, you have this sense that we are living in a kind of hinge in history, I think. It is quite a momentous time in which we live, I think.

Student: [inaudible]

Dr. Craig: From Kissinger then? OK.

Student: [inaudible]

Dr. Craig: Of course, the Pope’s remarks would not be refuted by showing cases of inconsistency on the part of the church. His remarks would still condemn those acts as well. Any kind of use of violence in the propagation of religious faith.

Student: [inaudible]

Dr. Craig: Incredible audacity in that PR campaign.[5]

Student: [inaudible]

Dr. Craig: OK. Good.

END DISCUSSION

[Opening prayer]

We’ve been talking about Paul’s anthropological terms. We saw that one of the most important of these is the word soma which means “body.” We saw that certain theologians influenced by materialism or existentialism have sought to argue that soma doesn’t really mean “body” in terms of my physical organism, but it means the self in abstraction from the body – the self, the “I”, the person. We saw that the argument that they offered on behalf of this claim was that the word soma often serves as the antecedent for personal pronouns like “he” or “we” or “you” in the New Testament. Therefore, it is argued, it must mean the whole person not just the physical body. But we saw that that argument was, in fact, I think, very weak. It assumes that the pronoun expands the meaning of the term soma rather than that soma restricts the meaning of the pronoun. In fact, when you look at the context of those passages (as we did last week) we saw that in every case the word soma was restricting what the personal pronoun was referring to by emphasizing the physical side of a person’s nature or life. It would often be in the context in which one would refer to one’s flesh or to sexual behavior or to one’s limbs as instruments of righteousness or unrighteousness. So in fact the argument that soma, because it is used with personal pronouns, doesn’t refer to the physical body is really a weak argument.

When we look at how soma is used elsewhere in the New Testament, I think we can see that it is clearly a physical entity that is denoted by the word soma – it means the body. Let’s just look at a few passages.

1 Corinthians 7:4: “The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.” He is not talking here about one’s self. The context of sexual relations and intercourse makes it clear he is talking about the physical body which belongs to one’s spouse.

Similarly, Romans 1:24: “Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity that their bodies might be dishonored among them.” Again, the context makes it clear he is talking about sexual immorality, particularly, homosexual activity. He is talking about the dishonoring of their physical bodies by sexual practices.[6]

Or, look again at 1 Corinthians 6:12-20,

Here, again, the context is talking about food for the stomach, the stomach for food. Talking about sexual immorality, talking about being one flesh with a prostitute in sexual intercourse, make it very evident that Paul is talking here about the sanctity of our physical bodies.

How about Romans 12:1? “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.” Here he is not simply saying to present yourselves to God, but again as the context makes clear, he is talking about presenting your body – your physical life – to God. Then in the second verse he talks about “do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” So both the body and the soul (the body and the mind) are to be totally dedicated to God as a living sacrifice. So the emphasis there is physical.

It is clearly physical in verse 4 where he says, “just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function so we in Christ . . .” and he goes on. He is clearly talking about the limbs that compose the body.

1 Corinthians 9:27: “I buffet my body and make it my slave, lest possibly after I have preached to others, I myself should be disqualified.” Here he is clearly talking about the physical part of his life as the metaphor of buffeting makes clear and the athletic metaphors that are in the context of this verse that I read.

1 Corinthians 13:3: “And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.” Here again the reference is clearly to the physical body because the “self” cannot be burned. He is talking about being martyred and his body burned in sacrifice.

Philippians 1:20, Paul says, “According to my earnest expectation and hope that I shall not be put to shame in anything but that with all boldness Christ shall even now as always be exalted in my body whether by life or by death.” There, again, he is talking about the body as the prospect of martyrdom is before him and he considers whether he is going to be killed and martyred for the Christian faith or whether he will live on.[7] Also notice in verse 24, “to remain on in the flesh is more necessary for your sake.” The use of the word “flesh” again shows Paul is thinking there of the physical body.

Finally, Romans 8:11, “But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit which indwells you.” The context there of talking about the resurrection of Jesus, how the Lord raised Christ, and then also the adjective “your mortal” bodies show that Paul is talking there about the physical body in which the Holy Spirit dwells.

So I think it is very clear from Paul’s usage of the word soma in the New Testament that what he is talking about there is our physical bodies. These theologians who have attempted to say that he is referring to some sort of non-physical self or person have really quite distorted the meaning of Paul’s words.

Let me quote from Robert Gundry in his book Soma In Biblical Theology by way of conclusion on the use of Paul’s use of this word. Gundry says,

So I think Gundry summarizes it very well, and underlines the importance of affirming the use of Paul’s word to mean “the body.” This means that the bodily resurrection of Jesus meant an empty grave was left in the wake of that event, and it means that someday our bodies will also be raised to immortal life and eternality.

START DISCUSSION

Student: [inaudible]

Dr. Craig: Thank you! He points out that, “What would this mean then when Paul uses the word soma metaphorically for the church – the body of Christ? That was actually the next point that I wanted to make. To say that the word soma means “the body” doesn’t mean that you can’t use it metaphorically, but it is a physical metaphor! When he talks about the body of Christ – remember he says, The eye cannot say of the foot, ‘I have no need of you’ or the head to the hand, ‘I have no need of you.’ - and he describes all these bodily parts as metaphors for believers composing the church. The church is the body of Christ metaphorically speaking, and it is clearly a physical metaphor. But you are right. What in the world would it mean to say that we make up the self of Christ? Or the person of Christ? This would be really blasphemous – it would be idolatry to say we are the person of Christ. So the metaphor of the church as the body of Christ, I think, underlines the point that we are making. This is a physical metaphor.

Student: [inaudible]

Dr. Craig: Yeah, there you go! Psychosomatic. “Psycho” comes from the Greek word psuche which means “soul” and soma (somatic) is the body. So a psychosomatic illness would be an illness that is induced in the physical body through the mind, like a hypochondriac or somebody of that sort. Very good. I hadn’t thought of that – that soma does have an English word from which it is derived, and that would be it.

Student: [inaudible]

Dr. Craig: It would be a good example. Thank you. That is helpful.[9]

Student: [inaudible]

Dr. Craig: As we’ll see, one of the other words that Paul uses that I am going to say something about now is sarx.

END DISCUSSION

Sarx means literally “flesh.” This is often used in a morally neutral sense roughly synonymous with “the body.” This touches sensitive nerves in the minds of some theologians because Paul will use the word “flesh” as a description of the sinful principal within human nature where he says, There is nothing good in me in my flesh. There he is not talking about the physical body or the meat out of which you are composed. But he uses the word “flesh” in a moral sense to connote that evil sin nature or that evil principal within humanity. Certainly we don’t want to reaffirm the resurrection of the flesh in that sense – that this morally evil principal will be resurrected. But what this overlooks is that there are many other places in the New Testament where Paul uses the word “flesh” in a morally neutral sense that is roughly equivalent with “the body” - with soma.

Let me give some examples of that. In 1 Corinthians 15, for example – this discussion of the resurrection of the body. 1 Corinthians 15:38-39 for example. Talking about the resurrection body, he says, “But God gives it a body just as He wished, and to each of the seeds a body of its own. All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one flesh of men, and another flesh of beasts, and another flesh of birds, and another of fish.” Probably what Paul is thinking of here would be the lists of clean and unclean animals in the Old Testament where certain kinds of meat you could eat and other kinds of meat was regarded as unclean. So Paul is saying here all meat isn’t alike. Roughly that is what the word “flesh” means here. It is not all alike. There are different kinds of flesh in different kinds of animals. Clearly, this is absurd if you think of this as a moral sense of “flesh.” He is talking here clearly in a very physical, morally neutral sense that roughly means meat or the organic stuff out of which physical organisms are made.

So in this physical sense that Paul uses it in 1 Corinthians 15 it is unobjectionable to talk about the resurrection of flesh. It just basically means the resurrection of the body.

START DISCUSSION

Student: [inaudible]

Dr. Craig: That is really hard because the word was soma. That was the word for “body” in Greek. That is part of the difficulty of these theologians. When you take away all of the words for a literal understanding, what is left if an author did want to express a literal understanding? It would seem that he is left almost speechless because “flesh” and “body” were the terms in which one would speak of a physical, grave-emptying resurrection.

Student: [inaudible]

Dr. Craig: That may be that Bishop Spong was more or less admitting that he removed all the vocabulary for expressing a physical resurrection by reinterpreting it.

END DISCUSSION

Let me say a word about a third term that I think is important, and we already alluded to it, and that is psuche which is the word for “soul.” If you are looking for English words based on this – psychology or psychological, the study of the mind. Paul doesn’t teach a strict terminological distinction between soma and psuche. He will use a variety of terms to express the immaterial part of human being.[10] For example, take a look at 1 Thessalonians 5:23: “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved complete, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” There Paul refers to three elements in man’s nature – spirit, soul, and body. There is a debate, as we’ll see later on, between those that think there are two immaterial elements in human personhood rather than one immaterial element which perhaps has different functions. But there is not a strict terminological distinction between soma and psuche, or soul. Sometimes Paul will use the word “spirit” to refer to the immaterial part of a human being.

But nevertheless I think it is very clear that Paul did think that human beings are not just material mechanisms or material beings. He thought there is an immaterial soul, or spirit (whatever you call it), that is part of a human being in addition to the body. This is especially clear in passages in the New Testament where Paul envisages dying and the soul going to be with God and being separated from the body. Death is the separation of the soul and the body. It is clear that Paul thinks that when the body dies the lights just don’t go out. Even though the body dies, one’s soul lives on. This is clear, for example, in 2 Corinthians 5:1-10. Let’s read this together.

Here the earthly tent is our physical, frail, mortal body that will be struck down in death. The building from God will be the resurrection body which is eternal.

So the idea here is, Paul says when you die your earthly tent (your earthly body) is struck down and is gone. Nakedness would be the description of the soul without a body. This is a description that is often used in Greek literature of the soul after death – stripped of its body it is in a sort of state of nakedness.

The word here for “further clothed” is an interesting word. It is a Greek word that means to pull on top-clothing, like say a sweater, over the clothes you already have. What Paul is saying is, he doesn’t want to die and be in this state of nakedness (of a soul without a body). He wants to live until the return of Christ so that he will receive the resurrection body without going through the state of nakedness first. It will be a further clothing – a kind of pulling on top-clothing over the present body that we have.

What Paul seems to be saying there is that when you are present in the body, you are away from the Lord, but when you are absent from the body in death then you are at home with the Lord. You are not just extinguished. You are not non-existent.[11] When you die in your body (when your body dies) you go to be at home with the Lord. This clearly, I think, shows that Paul believed that in addition to the material body we also have an immaterial aspect of our person called “soul” or “spirit” or what have you that continues to survive after death and goes to be at home with the Lord. Paul didn’t want to have to go through that state of nakedness (of having the body stripped away). He preferred to live until the Second Coming of Christ. But nevertheless he sounds a note of courage here and says even if it should be called upon us to die before the return of Christ we are of good courage because we know that to be absent from the body is to be at home with the Lord.

START DISCUSSION

Student: [inaudible]

Dr. Craig: I think you make an absolutely correct point that these people, when they go to be at home with the Lord, they don’t receive their resurrection body at that time. Paul makes it very clear in 1 Corinthians 15 and, I think, 1 Thessalonians 4, that when Christ returns the dead in Christ will rise first. He will bring with him the souls of those who have fallen asleep. Then the dead in Christ will rise. Then those who are alive will be transformed similarly to go to be with the Lord. So he is talking about an intermediate state of the dead in which these are the souls of the righteous dead whose bodies now are rotting away in the ground but whose souls have gone to be with Christ and remain with him until the return of Christ at which time the soul will be reunited with its body in a resurrected, immortal, powerful body such as is described in 1 Corinthians 15.

Student: [inaudible]

Dr. Craig: I think that is well said, except I do want to say that I don’t think sarx means “heart and mind.” This means “flesh” in a physical sense. It is roughly synonymous with the body. It means the stuff that you pinch, that you feel, that you have too much of if you are overweight. That is what sarx is. Even when he says a “heart of flesh” that is a physical metaphor. It is a heart that is composed out of flesh rather than stone. I wouldn't make a whole lot out of the fact that I used three terms because we could have added pneuma here as well which is “spirit.” Then you would have four terms. So I wouldn’t make too much out of that. But I do agree with what you said that Paul does use sarx in the sense of that evil principal within human nature that is fallen and therefore there are the lusts and the passions that war against the soul. He will warn against following the passions of the flesh rather than the leading of the Spirit. He will contrast the works of the flesh and the works of the Spirit as in Galatians.

END DISCUSSION

With that we are out of time. Thank you all very much, and we’ll see you next week.[12]

[1] See http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg.html (accessed March 2, 2016).

[2] 4:55

[3] 9:57

[4] 15:00

[5] 19:57

[6] 25:00

[7] 30:02

[8] Robert H. Gundry, Soma in Biblical Theology: With Emphasis on Pauline Anthropology, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), p. 50.

[9] 35:03

[10] 40:00

[11] 45:02

[12] Total Running Time: 48:41 (Copyright © 2009 William Lane Craig)