The Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature (Genesis 2:7).
Standing in marked contrast with the two worldviews I just presented is that of the Bible. In Genesis, man is more than merely matter. We are told that the LORD God formed the man (adam) from the dust of the earth (adamah). We could translate ‘dust’ as minute particles. He then breathed the breath of life into him, and Adam came alive.
As the work of God’s hands, we are both natural and supernatural, physical and metaphysical. We are a dynamic unity of the two. To use a big philosophical term, a psychophysical fusion of material and spirit.
If we were to diagram this in contrast, I would draw a horizontal figure eight. Think of it as a Möbius strip. Do you know what that is? It comes from the field of mathematics. You can put your finger on one edge of a Möbius strip and begin tracing it around. You will discover that it has only one side and one edge. So it is with us. Matter and spirit, dust and breath, are fused together in a continuum. We are all a dynamic unity of the two.
The physical and the metaphysical are good. One is not higher or better than the other.
It may surprise you to learn that the Hebraic worldview presented in the Bible does not disconnect the immaterial from the material: And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good (Genesis 1:31).
From the standpoint of creation, the separation between the spiritual and the secular (remember the picture of Platonic dualism) is artificial, imposed on the text from the outside. The biblical mandate is holiness, to make the secular sacred. To bring everything under dominion to Christ Jesus in the kingdom of God.
That has enormous implications for how we live. It means that even the most ordinary activities in life can be considered holy from a biblical point-of-view. I am not speaking by hyperbole when I say, quite literally, the custodian of the church is engaged in every bit of spiritual activity as is the minister who preaches on Sunday. It may not seem so to you, but it is in God’s eyes. The sanctity depends entirely on the attitude with which you do what you do.
That is why Israel’s sages taught that every father had an obligation to teach his sons both Torah and a trade.
A trade is a godly activity. Here is a story they told to emphasize the point. If you are a carpenter at work and the rabbi comes in, you do not have to stand in his presence. Continue with your work because the trade of carpentry is hallowed as is the teaching of Torah. Man is a psychophysical unity, a fusion of the breath of God and the elemental dust of the earth.
Both are good. And both are to be offered up to God. This dichotomy or opposition between the physical and the spiritual, the body and the soul, is unknown to Scripture and alien to the Hebraic worldview.
The resurrection of the body should once and for all proclaim to everyone the significance of the body in the scheme of God.
Unlike the philosophers of ancient Greece and Eastern religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism, the ultimate goal is not to escape this body and float around in the spiritual realms, or perhaps to merge with God. The Bible teaches that, in some respects, you will have a body for eternity. A transformed physicality, granted, but a body nonetheless.
You are this unity. And all of you, including all of the natural world, are going to be transformed into ultimate liberty. Amen. Hallelujah!
You are not going off into Never-Never Land to do nothing-nothing when you die. No, God has come into His good world to prepare us for something. And because of that, we must take our bodies seriously.
The body and soul are a harmonious unity.
Body and soul are distinguishable, but they are not divisible. For the purpose of discussion we can distinguish between the body and the soul, but there is no division between them. You are not made of component parts. You are a fusion.
Think of it this way. When you get joy in your heart your body, indeed your whole being, feels better. Or vice versa, smack your finger with a hammer and see if spiritual words come out of your mouth. The Hebrew terms for “soul,” “body,” “breath,” and “spirit” are used interchangeably in the Bible. Why? Because it is all a fusion of God’s dynamic breath and man’s material fusion animated by that breath.
It is as accurate, even essential, for us to say that we have an animated body as to say we have an incarnated soul. To get the full biblical view, you have to affirm both points. To be human is to be an incarnated soul and an animated body.
I know this is a foreign way of thinking to many of us, but stay with me. I will talk about Paul’s use of “flesh” in the New Testament in a moment. (It should not come as a surprise to you that he is consistent with the Hebraic worldview of the Old Testament.) But for now, I want you to grasp that as an animated, incarnated being, you are to respect and care for your body for the glory of your great Creator.
