As Cambridge historian Richard Rex suggests,1https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/04/a-church-in-doubt Richard Rex, as a Roman Catholic characterises the crisis of the second millennium as the nature of the church rather than soteriology.there have been three great crises in the history of the church. In the first millennium the crisis was theology proper: what is the nature of God? In the second millennium the crisis was soteriology: how can we be saved? And in the third millennium we are now facing a crisis of anthropology: what does it mean to be human?
We are confronted by a bewildering array of ethical issues, from embryology to abortion, homosexuality and transsexuality, euthanasia and assisted suicide, and radical environmentalism. All these issues stem from confusion about our identity, our humanity, and ultimately from rejection of God’s creation design. Just as the devil hates God intensely, he also hates God’s good creation which reflects the glory of the Creator; in particular he hates men and women created in the image of God. As society openly rejects God’s revelation, it becomes more radical in its hatred of creation norms.
The common thread in many of the ethical issues today is a form of gnosticism: a separation of our identity, our personhood, from our physical body.
Transsexuality claims that someone can be biologically male, but that they are in reality a woman trapped in a man’s body. Because the real you is how you feel inside. Your physical body is just a ‘bone bag’, and if necessary, your body needs to be altered to correspond to the real you. There is a separation of your true identity from your physical body.
In embryology and abortion, there is general agreement that human life begins at conception. But there is not agreement whether the conceptus or the early embryo should be afforded personhood. This was one of the arguments of Roe vs.Wade, which ruled that the unborn child is human but not a person. In other words, there can be a body, but that does not necessarily signify the existence of a real person.
In euthanasia or assisted suicide an elderly person may be reasonably healthy physically, but their mind may be confused. So it is claimed that they lack personhood; their life has no value. The fact that they have physical life does not mean that they have life as a person who is worthy of respect, and it is time for them to die.
We could also add the modern challenges of social media and the online world of virtual reality – the notion that our online identity can be different to our physical identity, and indeed we can create one or more new identities as avatars apart from our physical bodies.
All of these ethical issues beg the question of what is the relationship between our physical existence and our personal identity? In theological terms, what is the relationship between body and soul? What is the relationship of our physical bodies to our identity as divine image bearers?
In this article, an examination of the doctrine of creation, we can do no more than to make a start in our thinking on these issues. Specifically, we will see that God created us as embodied souls: ‘living beings’. We will begin to see biblical answers to the questions and challenges of the contemporary world. Then in a second article (which, again, will only be a start in addressing the questions), we will look at the doctrine of redemption, and our life and practice as Christian believers and as churches as ‘living sacrifices’.
The Unity of Body & Soul
I would not want us to underestimate the difficulty of the task upon which we are engaged in investigating the nature of body and soul. As Herman Bavinck puts it so simply: ‘We do not fully understand the relation between body and soul’.2Herman Bavinck, Reformed Ethics. Volume 1: Created, Fallen, and Converted Humanity, ed. John Bolt (Baker, 2019), 44. There are mysteries here, and unanswered questions.
However, it is generally suggested that there are four possible ways of thinking about the relationship of body and soul.3[1] Preston Sprinkle, summarised by Robert S. Smith, ‘Body, Soul and Gender Identity: Thinking Theologically About Human Constitution’, EIKON, 3:2 (Fall 2021): 27.The first view (physicalism) denies the existence of an immaterial soul or spirit. We will dismiss that view immediately. The second view (non-reductive physicalism) affirms that we are more than our bodies but denies a body/soul distinction. The third view (soft dualism) acknowledges a body/soul distinction but insists that both are necessary for human personhood. The fourth view (strong dualism) sees body and soul as fundamentally distinct substances and equates the human person with the soul, not the body.
Now it is the fourth view which creates difficulties in the ethical issues we have just outlined. And yet it is the fourth view which I fear is widely prevalent in Christian circles.
If we are asked ‘who is the real you?’, there is a tendency to regard our bodies as of secondary importance. After all, our bodies may be damaged by accident or illness; we may lose limbs or certain bodily functions. But we do not see that as fundamental to our true identity, because damage to our bodies does not affect the soul. And at death our body dies, but the ‘real me’ continues to live as the soul leaves the body and I go to be with Christ which is better by far (Phil 1:23). As a result, we begin to think that our physical bodies are only of secondary importance, and that the body is certainly secondary with regard to our identity. Augustine took this view, not least because of his Platonist background. He held that the soul alone bears the image and knowledge of God. The body tends to divert the soul from spiritual things and to tempt it with sinful desires.4John W. Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate (Eerdmans, 2000).Augustine’s views were influential at least until the 13th century, and indeed were picked up by Calvin to some extent. As preachers we might urge our people not to focus on our physical bodies, but our souls which are eternal. But at this point, we are only a few steps from saying that it is our soul alone and not our body that defines us as human persons.
We need to dispel this view by a brief examination of biblical evidence, looking at key words in Old and New Testaments which are generally translated as ‘body’ and ‘soul’. In the Old Testament, we often read nephesh as ‘soul’ and basar as ‘body’ or ‘flesh’. For example, the KJV translates nephesh as ‘soul’ 436 times. We like to think that there is a neat distinction between soul and body. So, for example the KJV translates nephesh hayah (Gen 2:7) as ‘a living soul’. We might conclude that the emphasis is that we are created as spiritual beings. But this is an unhelpful translation. Nephesh hayah simply indicates that we are living beings, in the same way that animals are also described as nephesh hayah (Gen 1:20, 1:21, 1:24, and especially 1:30) –living creatures who have the breath of life. We wouldn’t want to say that animals have souls in exactly the same way that humans have souls.
The fact is that the Hebrew word nephesh has a whole range of meanings. For example, ‘Save me O God for the waters have come up to my nephesh – neck’ (Ps 69:1). Or, ‘the nephesh is in the blood’ (Gen 9:4); this does not mean that our soul is identified with our blood (as Jehovah’s Witnesses believe), it just means that our physical life is identified with our blood. If the blood of a person or an animal is poured out, it is dead. Interestingly, nephesh is used in Leviticus 21:11 to describe a corpse. In Isaiah 55:2 – ‘… your nephesh will delight in the richest of food’ – the word clearly refers to our physical body.
In other words, the biblical writers are happy to identify nephesh with the physical body, and with physical life. They do not make a sharp distinction between body, physical life and soul. The same is true in the New Testament. We generally translate the Greek word psyche as ‘soul’. Yet we find that psyche can be synonymous with physical life: ‘even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life (psyche) as a ransom for many’ (Matt 20:28). Similarly, in Acts: ‘our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men who have risked their lives (psyche) for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (Acts 15:25-26). Imagine sending out missionaries and appealing for prayer because they are in danger of losing their souls; the church family would get the message that their salvation is in danger! ‘The good shepherd lays down his life (psyche) for the sheep’ (Jn 10:11). ‘Sirs, I perceive that the voyage will be with injury and much loss, not only of the cargo and the ship, but also of our lives (psyche)’ (Acts 27:10). Even in modern usage, if you are in peril on the sea and send out an SOS (‘Save our Souls’) you hope to see a lifeboat, not an evangelist.
So, all we learn from our brief studies of nephesh and psyche is that the Scriptures do not make a clear demarcation between the soul and our physical life, our physical bodies. We would like the Scriptures to be clearer, to show us exactly which bits of us can be identified as souls – where the physical body ends and the soul begins – but there is no such clarity. In other words, the idea that body and soul are separate, and that the human person is equated with the soul rather than the body is an unbiblical idea. It is dualism; it has more to do with Gnosticism than with Christianity.
The biblical teaching is that we are holistic. We are embodied souls. Herman Bavinck, speaking of the creation of man, remarks that, when the Scriptures have man become a living soul with the in blowing of the breath of life ‘they cut off every Platonic or Cartesian dualism. The person as soul cannot be outside of the body. This applies to his essence as well and, thus, to the image of God. Spiritualism and asceticism must be rejected no less than materialism.’5Herman Bavinck, Foundations of Psychology, trans. Jack Vanden Born, Nelson D. Kloosterman and John Bolt, Bavinck Review 9 (2018), 48.
In other words, the biblical picture of humanity is much more robustly holistic than much contemporary thinking. None of this is to deny that humanity has various facets and capacities. We are physical beings, with the capacity to move, and craft, and create, and organise, and manage the created order. We have minds, with the capacity to think and analyse. We have wills, and personalities and emotions. We are spiritual beings with the capacity for engagement with our Creator. But the point is that all of these are tightly inter-related.
Louis Berkhof agrees that we need to consider man holistically: ‘It is not the soul but man that sins; it is not the body but man that dies; and it is not merely the soul, but man, body and soul, that is redeemed in Christ.’6Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1971), 192. John Cooper states it clearly: ‘Biological processes are not just functions of the body as distinct from the soul or spirit, and mental and spiritual capacities are not seated exclusively in the soul or spirit. All capacities and functions belong to the human being as a whole, a fleshly spiritual totality.’7Cooper, Body, Soul and Life Everlasting, 70.
There is not a spiritual bit of us over here and a physical bit over there; we are a unity. In other words, our identity is as embodied souls. Our physical bodies are not just useful physical receptacles which transport our souls around and enable our souls to express themselves in actions and words, like a biological golf buggy carrying us around and enabling us to achieve our spiritual goals. No, if our bodies were just that then it would make very little difference if we had a different body, of any gender or ethnicity. Rather, our souls are specific to our particular body. Our souls can be described as ‘kind souls’. Not in the sense of ‘she’s a kind soul’ – showing kindness – but rather as being of a particular kind, specifically designed for our body. Or we might put it the other way around and say that our souls determine what kind of bodies we have.
Now if we apply this to the contemporary issues of transgenderism and homosexuality, you can see at once that the whole notion of having a separate inner identity which is different to the identity of our physical body and the purpose for which our body was created has no basis at all. Genesis 1:27 teaches us that God made us in his image and likeness, and he made us male and female. Then, immediately, there follows the commission to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth (v. 28). In other words, our identity as human beings in the image of God is inseparable from the fact that we are gendered male or female, and that we have physical bodies which are designed to fulfil a gendered function – namely procreation through the union of male and female. Our humanity, and our biological sex and our gender, are inseparable.
The Distinction of Body & Soul
We have seen the unity of body and soul, but clearly that is not all that is to be said. At death the soul leaves the body: ‘Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it’ (Eccl. 12:7). In other words, to maintain that we are holistic beings, unities of body and soul, is not to say that we are monistic, that we are just made of one stuff, and that there is no distinction at all between souls and bodies. At death the physical body remains, albeit dead, and the soul remains alive, albeit less than fully human.
At death, the soul is still identifiable as the soul of the deceased. Even in the Old Testament which is so robustly holistic in its view of body and soul, there is a clear hope of the afterlife, and a continued existence after death before the resurrection of the body. ‘For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption’ (Ps16:10; cf. Pss 49:15, 73:26, Isa 26:19). Perhaps the clearest testimony is Daniel 12:2: ‘Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt’. When the Lord Jesus Christ appeared on the Mount of Transfiguration, he was accompanied by both Moses and Elijah who were clearly recognisable in some way. Paul desires to depart and be with Christ which is better by far. Christ promises the thief on the cross that today he will be with him in paradise.
And yet, to be a disembodied soul is not to be fully human; it is not the ultimate destination. Paul speaks of not wanting to be unclothed, that is, disembodied (2 Cor 5:4). The New Testament describes disembodied souls as having physical characteristics, as if the Scriptures can only speak of the intermediate state in light of the resurrection of the body. For example the souls under the altar in Revelation 6 are given white robes to wear (which only makes sense in anticipation of having bodies). In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, the soul of the rich man suffers agony in the fire of hell and longs for water to cool his tongue, even though he does not have a tongue in the intermediate state (Lk 16:24).
So we are now in a position to refine our understanding of body and soul. We began with four possible views. We have dismissed the first and the fourth. We can now see that the truly biblical position is the third, namely soft dualism, which acknowledges a body/soul distinction but insists that both are necessary for human personhood.
The Value of Body and Soul
There is one further element that needs to be established regarding our human nature as body and soul. You recall that the language of Genesis 2:7 uses the same form of words for the creation of man as is used for the creation of the animals (e.g., Gen 2:19). So, is there any basis here for assigning unique value to human life?
The answer is found, of course, in the context of Genesis 1:26-28. Because here the distinction between humanity and the other living creatures is very clear. It is only for man that there is the divine conference: ‘Let us make man’. In other words, there is a sense of this requiring special deliberation; this is something glorious which is different from the creation of any animal. This is the climax of God’s creative activity. And then we are told what is different and distinctive that man is created in God’s image and likeness.
Now, I have no space to consider in detail the issue of what it means to be made in the image of God. I will simply follow the exegesis of my beloved Hebrew teacher Peter Gentry.8Peter Gentry and Stephen Wellum, Kingdom through Covenant (Wheaton: Crossway, 2012), 195ff. The term ‘likeness’ indicates that Adam has a special relationship to God like that of father and son. This is picked up in Genesis 5 where we are told that Adam fathered Seth in his own likeness, after his image. We are clearly intended to draw a parallel with Genesis 1 here. And the term ‘image’ indicates that Adam has a special status as king; because he has this royal status he is to exercise dominion. This is picked up by David in Psalm 8 that man is crowned with glory and honour.
There is much more that we could say about being in the divine image. We might want to reflect on ways in which humanity is godlike, in the sense of our capacities or capabilities, or our ethical qualities in righteousness and holiness. But the essence of being in the image and likeness of God is a matter of relationship. It speaks of our relationship with God, and therefore our relationship with the world. And the immediate context is then even more evocative, because if verse 26 is speaking of a divine conference between the persons of the Godhead, then man is created in the image and likeness of God, in relationship with the Triune God. This was God’s creation purpose, and indeed the purpose of salvation is to restore that relationship, just as in John 17 the Lord Jesus Christ prays that those who believe in Him ‘… may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you….’ Salvation is relational, just as creation was relational; it is the work of reconciliation.
If we return to Genesis 2:7, what is remarkable about this verse is not the words themselves, which as we have seen have no unique significance. No, what is remarkable is the intimacy, the personal relationship which is far beyond what is described for the creation of the animals. In particular, God breathed into Adam’s nostrils the breath of life. George Smeaton is helpful in identifying the breath of God as the Spirit of God.9George Smeaton, The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1958), 10ff. The Lord is granting to Adam life in the Holy Spirit. He is creating the first man as a temple of the Holy Spirit. And so there is the spiritual capacity to relate to the Holy Spirit. There is meaningful communion between the Spirit and the man.
And that relationship with the Lord is enjoyed body and soul. It is only as body and soul that we are living beings.
It seems to me that this is at the very heart of our human identity. That we were created by God in relationship with God, with a capacity to know and love and serve and worship God. And that relationship with God continues even after the Fall. Think, for example, of that remarkable observation of the apostle Paul, speaking of fallen and sinful humanity: ‘For although they knew God, they did not honour him as God or give thanks to him’ (Rom 1:20-21). In other words, as Calvin observes in the opening section of the Institutes, our knowledge of ourselves is inextricably related to our knowledge of God. And our identity is defined by God himself.
The reason why this generation is so confused about human identity is because this generation has deliberately and purposefully rejected the true and living God revealed in his Son the Lord Jesus Christ. And if we reject the knowledge of God we become fools. We are lost. But if we embrace the revelation of God in His Word as a personal Lord who creates us as persons in relationship with Him, then we understand that our identity is rooted in being created in His image and likeness.
It is our glory both that we know the Lord, and also that he knows us. And the Lord knows us all through our gestation in our mother’s womb:
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb….
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth…
Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
(Ps 139:13, 16).
The Lord knows us all through our mortal lives – Jesus speaks of every one of the hairs on our head being numbered. And so we can be confident that the Lord will continue to keep us through death and mysterious intermediate state: ‘God will ransom me from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me’ (Ps 49:15).
Our confidence, our hope, is rooted in our union with Jesus Christ, our covenant relationship with him. When we sit at the beside of a dying brother or sister in Christ, and they ask us what lies after death, and how can they be sure of their state in the afterlife, we do not start discussing theological or philosophical ideas about the intermediate state. No, we simply say that ‘…everyone that looks on Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and He will raise them up on the last day’ (Jn 6:40). Our security is that we are in his grip. Our assurance is rooted in his love from eternity past which will not let us go. Or as the Lord Jesus Christ says: ‘I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand’ (Jn 10:28).
So, we have seen the essential unity of body and soul, that we are embodied souls, we are holistic beings. We have seen that body and soul are nevertheless distinct while each is a necessary part of human identity. And we have seen that our identity and value as body and soul is rooted in our relationship with the Lord our Creator and our Redeemer.
Ethical applications
We have not answered all the questions (!). But we have made sufficient progress to return to some of the ethical questions with which we began.
The Beginning and End of Life
We come back to the question of abortion and embryology. When does life begin? Biologically there is agreement that life begins at conception. But the disagreement is on the status of that life. It is just biological life? Is it just cellular life? Is it just a potential human being?
It rather depends on how you define the nature of humanity. If, like many unbelieving philosophers you define humanity in terms of the ability to communicate, or in terms of functionality, then there is real doubt about the humanity of the conceptus. Indeed, you will be familiar with the arguments of Peter Singer who declares that the unborn child or the dementia patient, have less value than a dolphin which demonstrates higher intelligence and communication skills.
But if we embrace a biblical view of humanity as embodied souls, then the presence of a biological human being, however small, indicates the presence of an eternal soul. And if we embrace a biblical view of relationships, then we will also challenge the view that this single cell is not in relationship with anyone. Because even the single cell is in relationship with the Lord, the Creator and Redeemer. It is ultimately the Lord who has brought this human life into existence, and this human life has value in his sight. It is the Lord who confers status on the early embryo, having made her in his image and likeness.
More than that, the conceptus is also in relationship with her parents. Conception, after all, according to the Lord’s purpose, takes place in the context of the one flesh relationship between husband and wife. I warmly recommend Oliver O’Donovan’s little book ‘Begotten or Made? for thoughtful reflection on this theme.10Oliver O’Donovan, Begotten or Made? (Clarendon Press, 1984). There may not yet be a brain, or a beating heart, but these will develop according to the Lord’s creation design. The brain and the heart do not define the identity of the embryo as human; rather it is the other way around. Because the early embryo is human, the brain and heart will develop.
There are a number of Scriptures we could point to which indicate the significance of embryonic life. For example, David confesses that in sin his mother conceived him (Ps 51:5). Because David’s identity can be traced back to the moment of conception, he is morally culpable and accountable from that point. From that point he becomes a son of Adam in sin.
But ultimately, we point to the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. We need to ask the question at what point did the Lord Jesus Christ take flesh? The only possible answer to that question, I would suggest, is when he was conceived in the womb of the virgin Mary. In other words, he took flesh as a single cell. There was no human male contribution to this conception; there was only the single cell of Mary’s egg. The miracle was effected by the direct action of the Holy Spirit. From that moment he was one Person with both divine and human nature.
There is no point during the pregnancy of Mary when the infant Lord Jesus can be described as merely foetal matter: biologically human but falling short of personhood. There is no point after his incarnation in the power of the Spirit that he was merely biologically human but without a soul. No, he took flesh, and became like us in every way, beginning his human existence at the moment of conception. It is very clear that even in his pre-natal state, John the Baptist leapt for joy at the approach of Mary bearing the infant Jesus. And Elizabeth declared Mary to be the mother of my Lord. So, the Lord Jesus was the Lord before he was born.
If we grasp this, then we see the horror of abortion, with countless millions made in the image and likeness of God slaughtered in the silence and darkness of their mothers’ wombs – 200,000 in the UK each year, every year. That is not counting those aborted by the ‘morning after pill’. That is not counting the unknown thousands who perish in the experiments of embryology, or in the countless embryos which die in the process of IVF. That is not counting those embryos lost because of hormonal contraception, every type of which includes some abortifacient action. Yet all of this is normalised in modern society; it is considered to be standard practice.
Moreover, if we have a grasp of the beginning of life, then we will also have a grasp of the end of life, too. Because we cannot measure the value of a soul by how well it functions or communicates. We have to resist the current moves towards euthanasia and assisted suicide in the UK, which have already made such advances with horrifying consequences in the Netherlands and Canada. We must not despise someone with faltering capacities; this is a person of inestimable value in the sight of God, and if we have contempt for the dementia patient, or the frail elderly person, then we have contempt for their Creator in whose image they are made.
There are enormous challenges for us here. How are we equipping our people to confront these issues – particularly those who work in healthcare or in fertility clinics? How are we counselling young couples who are considering contraception, or struggling with infertility? How are we counselling those who are caring for elderly relatives? These are very practical questions.
Gender and Sexuality
Going back to Genesis 1:27-28 Peter Gentry points out that it is chiastic in structure. Verse 27 begins with man being created in the image of God, and verse 28 ends with the exercise of dominion. Verse 27 ends with man being created male and female, and verse 28 begins with the command to be fruitful and multiply. So, exercising dominion is a direct result of being made in God’s image, and being fruitful is a direct result of being made male and female.
This means that our biological sex is designed for the purpose of procreation. I cannot separate my identity as a man from an intended purpose to be a father, nor can a woman separate her identity from the purpose of being a mother. That does not mean that every man will become a father, or every woman a mother. Indeed the Lord Jesus Christ was single, and not less male for that. The apostle Paul did not have a wife, or children, as far as we can tell. But that does not destroy the principle here. Our bodies speak of our vocation.
And if we are embodied souls, with body and soul knitted together as vital components of our humanity, then we are called to embrace God’s creation purpose for our lives. Same-sex attraction is a perversion of God’s creation design. And transsexuality is a denial of our created identity.
Conclusion
First, we worship. ‘I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made’ (Ps 139:14). I hope that every morning when you stand in front of the mirror you make that confession. Not because we are conceited about our own good looks or our physique. But because our physical bodies prompt us to marvel at the glory of the Creator in whose image and likeness we are made. We praise him, and as we do so we express our spirituality, and as we sing and speak praises with our lungs and our vocal chords, we express our physicality. We are embodied souls, created to glorify God.
Second we must pray for this lost generation which has so rejected their Creator, that they have become fools, and been turned over to their foolish ways. We need to pray that the Lord would yet have mercy. By common grace this folly might be restrained as countless lives and families are devastated by ungodliness. And we must pray that yet by special grace the Lord might save many, turning men and women to himself to find hope and life in the True Image, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Further Reading
Anderson, Matthew Lee, ‘The Biblical Case against IVF’, First Things, 311 (2021): 31–36.
Bavinck, Herman, Reformed Ethics. Volume 1: Created, Fallen, and Converted Humanity, ed. John Bolt (Baker, 2019).
———, Foundations of Psychology, trans. Jack Vanden Born, Nelson D. Kloosterman and John Bolt, Bavinck Review 9 (2018).
Cooper, John W., Soul, and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate (Eerdmans, 2000).
Hoekema, A. A., Created in God’s Image (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984).
Kapic, Kelly M., You’re Only Human (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2022).
Lapine, Matthew A, The Logic of the Body: Retrieving Theological Psychology (Bellingham: Lexham Academic, 2020).
Pearcey, Nancy, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions About Life and Sexuality (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2018).
Rex, Richard ‘A Church in Doubt’, First Things 282 (April 2018): 47-50.
Smith, Robert S., The Body God Gives: A Biblical Response to Transgender Theory (Bellingham: Lexham Academic, 2025).
This article was originally delivered as a paper at the 2024 Banner of Truth Ministers’ Conference, and is published here with the permission of the Banner of Truth.
