Journal: Eikon
Volume: EIKON 03:2 (Fall 2021)
Article: Body, Soul And Gender Identity: Thinking Theologically About Human Constitution
Author: Robert S. Smith

Eikon 3.2 (Fall 2021) p. 27

Body, Soul And Gender Identity: Thinking Theologically About Human Constitution

Robert S. Smith

Robert Smith is a Lecturer in Theology and Ethics at Sydney Missionary & Bible College in Sydney, Australia.

1. Understanding Human Constitution

In his recent book, Embodied: Transgender Identities, the Church & What the Bible Has to Say,1 Preston Sprinkle helpfully maps out the four main views of human constitution — i.e., the relationship between the material and immaterial aspects of the human person. The first is physicalism, which denies the existence of an immaterial soul or spirit. The second is non-reductive physicalism, which affirms that we are more than our bodies but denies a body/soul distinction. The third is soft dualism, which acknowledges a body/soul distinction but insists that both are necessary for human personhood. The fourth is strong dualism, which sees body and soul as fundamentally distinct substances and equates the human person with the soul, not the body.2

Eikon 3.2 (Fall 2021) p. 28

Sprinkle, quite rightly, deems views one and four to be sub-Christian. His own view (I think) seems to hover somewhere between two and three. However, in my judgment, non-reductive physicalism falls somewhat short of the biblical presentation of humanity. While its proponents are quite right to point out that both the Hebrew term nepesh and Greek term psychē often refer to the whole person rather than just the inner person (e.g., Gen. 2:7; 1 Pet. 3:20), the question is whether the Bible draws a distinction between the inner and outer person. The unequivocal answer of both testaments is that it does (e.g., Eccl. 12:6; 2 Cor. 4:16). And, what’s more, it sometimes uses both nepesh and psychē to refer to the inner person specifically (e.g., Gen. 35:18; Matt. 10:28).3

So that leaves us with soft dualism or, what I think is a better term, dualistic holism, the view that human beings are “integral personal-spiritual-physical wholes—single beings consisting of different parts, aspects, dimensions, and abilities that are not naturally independent or separable.”4 It also brings us to the question I want to pursue in the...