Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, Part I: A Biblical Theology of Embodiment

To develop a biblical theology of embodiment we begin with an exploration of the words that the Hebrew Scriptures use to refer to our physical bodies. Although biblical Hebrew does not have a specific word for “the body” per se, there are three distinct word groups that, depending on their usage and context, we might translate in English as “the body.” There is, for instance, the word gevı̂yâh, which occurs 13 times in the Old Testament and most often refers to a dead body—a corpse (e.g. Judg. 14:9, 1 Sam. 31:13, Ps. 110:6)—although interestingly, it is also used to refer to the angelic “bodies” of the cherubim in Ezekiel 1:11, and the “body” of the angelic messenger in Daniel 10:6.

Another term that can refer to the body is the word nephesh. This word usually refers to the whole person—body, spirit, mind, and will together—and is most often translated as “living being” (nephesh chay). In some specific cases, however, the Hebrew Scriptures use it to describe a “dead body” (nephesh mût, Lev. 21:4, Num. 6:6), suggesting that the concrete substance of the physical body was included in the meaning of the word. By far the most common word for the body, however, is bâśâr, a term that appears 270 times in the Old Testament and literally means “flesh.” While bâśâr has a wide semantic range, and can mean literal “flesh” (i.e. meat), one’s skin (the “flesh of my body”), or one’s kin (my “flesh and blood”), the word can also function as a metonym for the whole body (see Exod. 30:32; Lev. 6:3; Ps. 119:120; see especially Prov. 14:30). In Hebrew poetry, interestingly, bâśâr sometimes appears together with nephesh, as a kind of hendiadys for the “whole person” (e.g. Isa. 10:18; Ps. 63:2).

A Biblical Definition of the Body

When we examine these various terms, we discover that the Hebrew Scriptures saw “the flesh” as integral to our understanding of the person. There was no self—no nephesh—apart from the “enfleshed” self. At the same time, the Hebrew Scriptures do not have a distinct word for “the body” that refers precisely to what we mean when we use that English word. Bâśâr often describes just the literal flesh, and usually it means “body” only by extrapolation; nephesh usually refers only to the “whole self,” and usually it means “body” only by interpolation. In the Hebrew Scriptures, in other words, a person was the flesh of which he was made, and at the same time, he was far more than just his flesh.

Here we come to the difficulty of expressing a biblical theology of embodiment in contemporary English terminology, because many of the words we might use imply a nascent, spirit/matter dualism that denies the goodness of the material world, or at the very least sees it as inferior to the spiritual. This understanding of reality is foreign to the authors of the Hebrew Scriptures, who believed that God meant it when he said that the creation is “very good” (Gen. 1:31), and who tended to understand heaven and earth, not as two separate worlds but as two interlocking and overlapping realities. We run the risk of an unbiblical dualism, for instance, if we describe the body as “a vessel” or “home” for the spirit, or if we view the physical body as though it were of less consequence than the non-physical soul. The Hebrew Scriptures consistently presuppose an inseparable integrity between one’s immaterial “soul,” and one’s physical body. As Genesis 3:19 puts it, we are the dust of which we are made.

Perhaps the language of “intersections” might serve our purposes better than “vessel” or “dwelling place for the soul” terminology here. In the Hebrew understanding, we might say, the physical body is the intersection between the material and the immaterial realities that constitute the human person. It is the locus where the unseen stuff of life (reason, thought, will, imagination, emotion, spirit), and the seen (flesh and matter) come together and join as one.

Embodiment in the Hebrew Scriptures

This idea, that the body is the intersection of the seen and unseen realities that constitute the self points us toward some general implications of the Hebrew Bible’s understanding of embodiment. For instance, it eschews the idea that the physical body is somehow inferior to the immaterial soul and suggests, instead, that the body is, or was meant to be, a very good thing along with the rest of God’s good creation. In this way, the suggestion in Genesis 2:25, that in the beginning the man and the woman were naked together and unashamed takes on broader significance than simply a reference the “nakedness” of conjugal union. It implies, instead, that the human body was designed as a thing of wholesome beauty, intrinsically good as the medium through which life, love, and community was meant to be enjoyed. Although the story of the Fall may have marred this experience of “unashamed nakedness,” still the Hebrew Scriptures never retract the vision. In Psalm 139:14 we are reminded that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made,” and in Song of Solomon 5:10-16 and 7:1-9, we have sensuous celebrations of both the male and female bodies in turn, exploring them literally from head to foot without the least note of shame.

A second implication of this theological definition is that bodily life is the medium through which we both experience and participate in the blessings of the covenant. We see this in the very language of the covenant itself, which, for Abraham at least, included the promise of children and land: physical life in the physical world surrounded by physical children that came from his physical body. The sign of the covenant follows this logic, inasmuch as it was a physical mark (circumcision) on his flesh (bâśâr), on the place where progeny literally sprang from. This helps to explain the seemingly obsessive emphasis the book of Leviticus places on ritual purity. The Levitical preoccupation with blood and skin-rashes and bodily emissions is not a neurotic fixation; it is, rather, a profound affirmation of the sacredness of bodily life. Of course, the New Testament will transform the covenant so it is no longer about land or offspring, but evens so it offers us equally physical signs of our bodily participation in the blessing: the sign of baptism and the feast of communion. This brings us to the final implication of this theological definition of the body: that the spiritual life is not separable from physical life. In Genesis 2 we read that the Lord God created the human being out of dust (‛âphâr) and breathed into him the breath of life (neshâmâh chay), and in this way he became a living being (nephesh chay). This suggests that being human involves both our physical bodies (dust) and the breath of God which gives them life (neshâmâh), and that these two are inseparable for a full understanding of what it means to be human.

Embodiment in the New Testament

As we turn from this survey of the Old Testament to explore the New, the first key text we come to is John 1:14, which unapologetically proclaims that in Jesus, the Word “became flesh” and made his dwelling among us. We start here because, if it is true that the physical body is the intersection between the seen and unseen stuff of life, then in the incarnation, we have the ultimate intersection—the intersection of heaven and earth, come together in the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. To the extent that he is the “image of the unseen God” (Col. 1:15), the Last Adam who restores the Image of God in us, Jesus restores the Creator’s original intention for human life, including life in the body. As Valerie Hess puts it, “Jesus has a body so that he can show us how to live more fully integrated in body and heart within our own body.” In “taking on” flesh and blood, we might say, Christ makes possible the “naked and unashamed” experience of bodily life, and with it the Creator’s affirmation of the physical body, that we glimpse in Genesis 2.

Unlike the Hebrew Scriptures, which lacked a distinct word for the body, the New Testament terminology is both more precise and more nuanced. As we explore the various terms it employs, we discover that the New Testament more clearly differentiates between our physical selves and our spiritual selves, but it does so still without undermining the holistic integration of the two that we see in the Hebrew Scriptures. Among the many terms in Greek which we might translate as “the body,” we have ptōma, which refers specifically to a dead body and functions in a way similar to the Hebrew word gevı̂yâh. There is also the word chrōs, which occurs only once (Acts 19:12) and refers specifically to the skin or the surface of the body. The predominant term in the Greek New Testament, however, is sōma, which functions in roughly the same way its English equivalent, “the body.” It can describe a living or dead body, the body of a man or animal, or a metaphorical “body” of people (e.g. the church). In a few places the New Testament establishes a strong distinction between the “body” (sōma) and the “soul” (psuchē), sometimes even presenting the one in contrast to the other. Paul commends the Thessalonians, for instance, to the one who is able to keep their “whole spirit, soul and body” blameless (1 Thess. 5:24), and Jesus enjoins us not to fear the one who can only harm the body and not the soul, but to fear instead the one who can “destroy both body and soul” (Matt. 10:28).

The Greek New Testament also uses the term sarx, which literally means “flesh” and can be used as a metonym for the whole body in a way similar to the Hebrew word bâśâr (e.g. Heb. 9:13). It should be noted, however, that this is not as common a usage as it is for bâśâr. Paul famously uses the term to describe the sinful human nature (e.g. Rom. 7:18), and carefully distinguishes “flesh” from the literal body (sōma). In his usage, sarx is opposed to the spiritual nature (pneuma, Gal 5:16-18) and the body (sōma) can be guided either by the flesh or by the spirit; that is, we can be led to act in sinful ways or in godly ways depending on which of these two influences we follow (see especially Rom. 8:13).

A final term worth mentioning here is the Greek word skēnōma, which literally means “tent” or “tabernacle,” and occurs twice as an apparent reference to the body. In 2 Peter 1:14 it speaks of “putting off my tent” and in 2 Corinthians 5:1 it speaks of our “earthly tent” being destroyed, in both cases using the imagery as an euphemism for death. This specific imagery may seem like a break from the body/soul integration that we observed in Old Testament anthropology, suggesting perhaps that the body is merely a disposable “tent” which houses the (more significant) soul. It should be noted, however, that in both instances the emphasis is on the temporary nature of earthly life (so in 2 Cor. 4:18—“what is seen is temporary,” and in 2 Pet. 1:14—“I will soon put off my tent”). This suggests that the point of the skēnōma imagery is to stress the transience and impermanence of the body, not to create an ontological division between it and “the soul.”

What stands out in this brief overview is that the New Testament’s biblical anthropology is consistent with that of the Old Testament, but it also adds two theologically important layers to our understanding. First, we note that, unlike the Old Testament, which believed that God’s Spirit was “in us” to the extent that we are living beings and all living beings are brought to life by his ruach (e.g. Ps. 104:29-30), the New Testament develops this notion further to suggest that through Christ the human body could actually become a “temple” of the Holy Spirit, in a way that transcends anything we discover in the Old Testament. The most obvious passage related to this idea is 1 Corinthians 6:12-20, where Paul argues against sexual immorality on the basis of the fact that the Christian’s physical body has become a “Temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God” (v. 19). The implication here is that the physical body has become “filled” with the Holy Spirit in a way that parallels the filling of the Old Testament Temple with the shekinah Glory of the Lord. This underscores but also transforms our previous discussion about the sacredness of bodily life.

Second, the New Testament suggests that, as good as it is, there is still something incomplete about life in the body, this side of the Resurrection, and that the fulfillment of the Creator’s intention for bodily life is yet to come. We see this, for instance, when Paul assures the Philippian church that God will “transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body” (Phil. 3:21). We see it also in the discussion of the resurrection body in 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul compares death to the sowing of a seed. We are “sown [as a] natural body,” he claims, and we will be “raised [as a] spiritual body,” a phrase that is not meant to describe some disembodied spiritual existence in Heaven, but resurrection embodiment in the New Creation, a body that is “spiritual” in the sense that it is filled, empowered, and brought to life by the Spirit of God. The incompleteness of bodily life comes into sharp focus in Romans 8:18-27 especially, where Paul describes the “groanings” we experience in this life and looks ahead hopefully to “the redemption of our bodies” (v. 23). Contrary to popular Christian notions of life after death as some disembodied bliss, the New Testament consistently maintains that bodily life will continue to matter in the life to come, and that the Christian hope is not simply the redemption of our immaterial souls, but the redemption—the physical resurrection—of our bodies. This knowledge transforms our experience of embodiment in this life. On the one hand, it reminds us that what it fully means to be embodied is not yet known but only glimpsed in the resurrection body of Jesus Christ. On the other hand, the promise of resurrection glory is a profound affirmation of the goodness of the body that should inspire us to enjoy bodily life with deep thanksgiving.

Living out the Meaning of the Body

The theology of embodiment developed in this paper—that the human body is the intersection of the seen and unseen aspects of our life before God—suggests a number of important implications for Christian ministry and spirituality. It suggests, for instance, that from God’s perspective, there is far more to our physical bodies than meets the eye. More than simply the corporeal matter which houses our spirits, our bodies have great potential to effect profound spiritual change in the world. MaryKate Morse touches on this aspect of embodiment in her discussions of the embodied nature of leadership, arguing that leaders “carry [their] influence in their bodies,” and that effective leaders manage “the use of their bodies in relational space” in order to effect change in the world. She suggests that the physical body is the medium through which we experience and convey presence, power, and influence, reminding us that “interactions in physical space define who is seen and heard and valued, and who is not; who has power, and who does not.” In a slightly different vein, Rob Moll argues that the physical anatomy of our bodies especially equips us for the spiritual life, that “our body’s design enables us to commune with God and to fellowship more closely with others.” Citing recent discoveries in neuroscience, he maintains that on a biological level, “our relationship with God is profoundly connected to what is happening inside of us, in our bodies.” We are the dust of which we are made after all, but that dust, it seems, is far more than mere dust.

A second implication of the theological definition of the body developed in this paper is that a healthy acceptance and even embrace of our own bodies is a vital aspect of our spiritual formation. Tara Owen makes this point repeatedly and eloquently in her study of the spiritual meaning of the body. “Our bodies don’t lie,” she claims, “and what they tell us about how we perceive reality is the key to stepping into actual transformation in Christ.” Elsewhere she argues that “alienation from our bodies is a form of alienation from God,” and that “[a] refusal to receive God’s redemption in our bodies is a symptom of [our] state of leb shabar [i.e. having a shattered heart].” In a related way, Valerie Hess and Lane Arnold argue that “the unity of the body with the soul influences our walk with Christ.” They urge us to become aware of “the connection between what happens in [our bodies] and what happens in [our souls].”

There are more implications we could point to here. We could discuss, for instance, the vital connection between soul care and body care, the way in which caring for one’s physical health and well being is an important discipline of the spiritual life. Ken Shigematsu makes this point emphatically in his book on developing a rule of life, where he argues that “physical practices are also spiritual practices,” and “when we attend to the basic needs of our bodies, we will likely find ourselves more attentive to God and more available to people.” Valerie Hess makes a similar point when she argues that “self-care is a godly activity.” In addition to the importance of stewarding our physical health, we might also point out the importance of bodily engagement in our worship and prayer life. In Praying Body and Soul, for example, Jane Vennard encourages Christians to become more “attuned to the messages our bodies send us” so that we can discover “important information about community prayer and our liturgical practices.” When our bodies are engaged in worship this way, as Hess and Arnold suggest, we find that “our bodies offer a language of love to God” that deepens and often transcends our words. And here, in this “embodied language of love,” at the intersection of our seen and unseen selves, we may discover the fullest meaning of the Psalmists declaration of adoration: “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”