Theology in the Raw - 758: #758 - What does it mean to be human? A conversation with Dr. Marc Cortez

Episode Date: September 23, 2019

Preston is a big fan of the work of Mark Cortez, so this conversation is long awaited! Marc is a specialist in the discipline of theological anthropology; in particular, the relationship between the mind and the body. After spending the first 30 minutes discussing theological anthropology and various approaches to the mind-body relationship (e.g. physicalism vs. dualism), Preston and Marc banter around about trans-related questions as they pertain to theological anthropology and why a biblical view of embodiment should reframe how we think about diet, exercise, sleep, and health. Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. Speaking of which, if you've been blessed, challenged, or encouraged by this podcast, yes, you know where I'm going with this. I am supported on Patreon. That is, this podcast is a listener-supported show. I don't run advertisements. I don't get paid to do this. I am supported by those who enjoy the show, who are encouraged by the show. So if you could spare five bucks a month, 10 bucks a month, or a hundred dollars a month, or a thousand dollars a month, whatever the Lord lays on your heart, I would encourage you to consider supporting Theology in the Raw. You can go to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw.

That's patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. And you can support the show for as little as five bucks a month. And you get access, if you support the show, you get access to various levels of premium content. I don't know if you know this, but I record two different Patreon only podcasts a month. So some of you who are avid listeners, you get, you know, a show that I release every single Monday. That's been my routine for the past year and a half or so you so you get the Monday show. So you get about four or five episodes a month, but actually record six to seven episodes a month, depending on how many weeks are in the month. I also write a blog every month, I write a special Patreon blog for my

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PrestonSprinkle.com, if you sign up for the newsletter during the month of September, you will not only get at least two newsletters a month, that's my goal is to write two newsletters a month to keep my followers updated on my life and ministry and whatever else is going on in my life. If you sign up, you will be entered to win one of six free copies of a recently released audio version of my book, People to be Loved. Some of you have read it. Some of you haven't, doesn't matter. Either way, Zondervan, who published my book, People to be Loved. Some of you have read it. Some of you haven't. Doesn't matter. Either way, Zondervan, who published my book, People to be Loved, recently published an audio version of the book. And so I have six free copies to give away. So in order to sort out which six of you

will get one of those free copies, I'm going to pick from the number of people who sign up for my newsletter during the month of September. So go to Prestonspringgold.com, sign up for my newsletter. You'll be entered to win one of six free copies of the audio version of People to be Loved. Okay. My guest on the show today is Dr. Mark Cortez. Mark is a professor of theology at Wheaton College and Graduate School. He's a former youth pastor. He now teaches and writes on a variety of theological issues, focusing particularly on issues related to the nature of the human person. What does it mean to be human? What's the relationship between the body, mind, soul, and spirit? Is human nature simply physical, like everything can be reduced down to the physical, or is there some kind of dualistic aspect of human nature whereby the body and soul are ontologically distinct entities? Does that

make any sense? Anyway, Mark has wrestled with these questions for a good chunk of his Christian life. He's authored and edited many books, including the recently, uh, released book resourcing theological anthropology. I've read the book. It's really good. Um, he's also edited come let us eat together sacraments and Christian unity, um, and also Christian, uh, Christological anthropology in historical perspective. And also my favorite, well, favorite, I think the most helpful book I've read of his is called Theological Anthropology, A Guide for the Perplexed by Mark Cortez. That is M-A-R-C-C-O-R-T-E-Z. Mark is, I've been a huge fan of Mark's work for so many reasons that will come out in this podcast. We talk about theological anthropology. We talk about the relationship between the mind and the body. We also get into some really heavy and

heady yet practical discussions around various trans identities and experiences. And Mark is one of the few people who have actually thought deeply about how theological anthropology applies to trans issues, trans issues, trans people and various identities. And so I'm super excited about that portion of the podcast that comes around about after about a half hour into the episode and then for the next 20 minutes or so. So around the 30 minute to 50 minute mark, we talk about trans, um, the trans conversation as it relates to the theological anthropology. Then we also talk briefly about like diet, exercise, health. If we really view human nature as essentially embodied, what does this mean?

What is, what implications does this have for our health, our sleep, our water in tank, our overall diet and health and exercise and so on and so forth. Anyway, I loved this conversation. Mark is an awesome dude and a super smart guy. So please welcome to the show for the first time, the Dr. Mark Cortez. Thank you. Okay, welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. I am here with Dr. Mark Cortez. And as I said in the intro, I have just become a big fan from a distance of Mark and his work. So I'm so excited to talk to you on the

podcast, Mark. Thanks so much for being on Theology in the Raw. Oh, my pleasure. Looking forward to it. So give us your journey specifically into Christian academia, why you wanted to pursue that route, and also your specific area of theological anthropology. And maybe you can unpack what that even means. It's not a familiar phrase to a lot of people. So yeah, give us a little narrative of how you got to where you are now. Sure. Well, my journey into academics was not planned. My background originally is in youth ministry. So I did my undergraduate degree at Multnomah University in Portland with the intent of becoming a youth pastor. I did do my undergraduate degree in theology, which has worked out well for me,

but largely because I was convinced even at that time that theology is vital for healthy ministry and specifically healthy youth ministry. And so that was my vocational goal. I went, I did part-time and full-time youth ministry for about 10 years in the Portland, Vancouver area. And even when we stepped away from that ministry, I'd always known that I wanted to go back to seminary. But even at that time, I thought I was going back, I was going to seminary to get more training to continue on in youth ministry.

I thought I was going back to, I was going to seminary to get more training to continue on in youth ministry. I really kind of for a long time was convinced that my vocation, my calling was full-time lifetime youth ministry. And so I went into seminary planning on continuing on youth ministry and honestly just fell in love with the vision of training people to do ministry. And yeah, I kind of got lit a fire under me for that particular way of doing things. And I also kind of realized that most of what I love about youth ministry, I could continue to do

as a volunteer. And I could train people to do ministry while doing youth ministry. Maybe not vocationally, but the lifetime part of it could continue for me. So you went to Western Seminary in Portland, right? I did. I went to Western Seminary there. Where did you do your PhD at and what was it in? St. Andrews in Scotland in theology. So all of my degrees, my undergrad's in theology, my seminary degrees were in theology, my PhD's in theology.

Even though it was only kind of halfway through that, that I began to realize, oh, I think I may end up teaching theology. Like I thought this was all just theological training to continue on in ministry. When, when were you at St. What, what, what,

what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what,

what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what,

what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what,

what, what, what, what, what, St. Andrews. Just curious.

Let me see. I was in St. Andrews. Oh, four to oh, six. So we overlap. We were at the,

I was in Aberdeen. Oh, four to oh, seven. Oh, funny. Okay. I did not realize that you were there with him. Tim Oh, funny. Okay. I did not realize that.

So you were there with Tim Gombis? Yep. Yep. He was there. Or actually, we may have just missed each other. Or he was there my first year. He's one of the people that I got to know by getting connected, like Darian Lockett and Mickey Klink.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. They were my office mates there. Oh, so you didn't get anything done. How did you even get your PhD with Mickey Klink in your office? Yeah. Yeah. We had a lot of fun, but I also wore headphones a lot. And is it, oh, Dan Gertner, wasn't he in that office? Yep. Yeah. He was in that office as well. Yeah. That was a good group. Yeah. So one of the, the ironies of that experience is most of the people that like that whole office was almost all entirely new testament uh folk right um and uh then like the theology guy just got to hang out with them

so a lot of my saint andrews connections are biblical scholars uh yeah yeah interesting sorry i cut you off you're in the middle yeah oh no worries no i was going to say is that that that's uh uh one of the the funniest things about that transition is i found out from my wife even though i had always said i was into full-time lifetime youth ministry that she had been telling people for years that i was eventually going to transition from youth ministry into teaching uh and she just kind of knew that i wasn't there uh wasn't ready to hear that so she let me go on assuming that i was going to be in youth ministry long time long term and once i made the decision or started talking about teaching she's's like, Oh yeah, I've known for years that you were going to do that. Really? All right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So who'd you study under at St. Andrews? Was it Alan Torrance? Oh, Alan Torrance. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. For those who don't know, I mean, Alan Torrance is a big name in, in theology. He's not as well known, I think in evangelical American circles typically, but man, that's, was that a good experience? It was, it was a fabulous experience. And Alan's a great supervisor, extremely supportive. Loved being there. Was a little bit disconcerting to get there and find out that I was going to be hanging out with mostly American evangelicals the whole time.

I thought I was going to get this great global experience being in Scotland. I'm like, oh, no, no, these are the same people that I went to school with. And what was your dissertation topic? My dissertation, so my kind of big research question from the beginning, this goes a little bit to your question of how I got into theological anthropology, is the relationship between Christology and anthropology. And specifically, what does it mean to say that Jesus somehow reveals to us what it means to be human. It's kind of going through undergrad and seminary in theology,

I heard an awful lot about the idea that Jesus reveals who God is. And then I would hear kind of occasional comments that Jesus is also truly human and reveals what it means to be human. But I feel like we teased that side of it out as much. And then began noticing in a lot of the books that I was reading in Theology of Anthropology that it would say something in the introduction about Jesus revealing what it means to be human. But then I'd read the rest of the book and not kind of have a sense that that actually got picked up on

anywhere and was often left thinking, I thought we were talking about Jesus in this process at some point. So that was my big question going to PhD was what does it mean to start with Jesus in our understanding of what it means to be human and in kind of casting around for a good conversation partner on that I landed on Karl Barth because he in one of his volumes of the dogmatics that the whole thing is him starting with Jesus when answering particular issues about what it means to be human. So the first half of the dissertation

was just looking at what Barth does. Why does Barth think this is a good idea? And kind of how does he set up this Christological anthropology? But then I also wanted to have a test case of, so we're not just kind of talking abstractly about Jesus being important for anthropology, but does it actually make a difference when we focus in on a particular issue in theological

anthropology? And so I took Bart's Christological Anthropology and applied it to debates today about the mind-body relationship, the whole physicalism-dualism conversation. And I was kind of asked, how does Christology, starting with Christology, frame up that conversation differently and what implications does it have? So your main focus within theological anthropology is on the mind-body question. It was initially. And the body in particular has remained a key area of interest in mind and how we think theologically about the body. Why did God make us to be embodied beings in the first place?

theologically about the body. Why did God make us to be embodied beings in the first place? So I mean, I've read not everything, but a decent amount of your work. And I'm not sure I could even pinpoint where exactly you were at on the physicalism, the demonism, dualism kind of spectrum. Do you have a certain category there that where you would line up mostly? Or do you not even like to? Honestly, I don't. And part of that comes from, so the dissertation itself didn't answer the question. Answer the question. Like it was the kind of question that can be answered on should we be physicalists or dualists or whatnot.

What I ended up arguing is that there are, that starting with Jesus gives us a Christological framework within which we have to think about what it means to be human. And that certain ways of understanding the mind body relationship are not Christologically adequate. So certain extreme forms of dualism, certain extreme forms of physicalism, we start with Christology. Christology is going to say, no, we don't get to do those. There are a range of views that I argued are Christologically adequate, so they kind of

fit within the framework. But most of them struggle with certain aspects of what Christology tells us about what it means to be a human person. So even very holistic forms of dualism, I think still struggle with where the incarnation and the resurrection take us and thinking seriously about the body as it involves the human person. I think even certain forms of kind of non-reductive physicalism or emergent physicalism or whatnot, they're always going to struggle with questions about free will and responsibility. And so at the end of the dissertation, I said, I kind of recognized this doesn't solve the problem for us.

But I do think it gave me a way of thinking Christologically about the issue and say, like, if we stay inside this framework, we're at least thinking Christologically and adequately about the human person. And so we're I'm kind of I'm satisfied with the views that fall into that group. And I'm less worried about like, we have to pick one of these. Um, I do say that even if we're, um, like holistic dualists, if that's where we want to go, I think we should sound like physicalists most of the time. That that's just how the Bible talks about us most of the time. Uh, and that it's only when you get to some of these kinds of fringier issues of, you know, what happens to me after I die and intermediate state questions and whatnot. And I do find those interesting. And if you pushed on me hard enough, I probably would land on some type of holist dualism as my preferred view. But I'm going to sound like a physicalist when I talk

about most issues. So I would have said, yeah, I would have said you probably on the spectrum, lean slightly towards the physicalist side, but you would say you would lean slightly maybe in the other side only because of um when i wrestle with certain issues on the intermediate state uh in particular uh there's just i i struggle with where physicalism is going to get me on those particular kinds of issues um but I don't think in anthropology, I don't think our theology of the body should start with the intermediate state. Right, exactly. It's got to start elsewhere.

And I do think it starts with creation, incarnation, resurrection, which is going to push me to making the body absolutely central to my theological anthropology. So for our audience, and we're using these terms and everything, let's go back. No, no, terms and everything, let's go back. No, no, it's fine. Let's go back.

Can you give us a, this is first day of class and you're trying to articulate physicalism all the way across to say Cartesian dualism. And then there's various things in between if you can think of it like a spectrum. Can you walk us along that spectrum and maybe give us a one or two sentence

kind of description of each view from full-on physicalism to maybe Gnosticism or Cartesian dualism? So it's easy if you just kind of take the two broad categories of physicalism and dualism. So we're talking about really what is a human person fundamentally. Your various physicalist views are going to say the human

persons just are physical things. So I am my body and I'm not a body soul composite, which would be a dualist category. So on the dualist side, the human person is the combination of a physical thing and a non-physical thing. On the physical side, I'm just a physical thing. Technically, of course, there actually is a third category where I'm just a non-physical thing. I could go with some type of idealism and physical things don't really exist. And we're just combinations of ideas or experiences or energies or whatnot. And idealism actually is experiencing a bit of a revival right now. But for most purposes, you can kind of set that third option aside and play with it when you don't have anything to think about otherwise. So physicalism and dualism, they tend to dominate the conversation. Both of those have a range of views within them. And physicalism dualism itself is kind of an either or, right?

I either hold the position that I'm just a physical thing and then I try to figure out what that means, or I hold the position that I'm a combination of a physical and a nonphysical thing, body and soul, and try to figure out what to do with it. So there's kind of an either or between them. But once you land in one of those groups, now you've got a range of options. So physicalism can take you all the way down from on one end, what I would call kind of a reductive physicalism, or what people often refer to as a nothing but version of physicalism, where I'm just a physical

thing. And if you really want to understand me, all you have to do is understand the processes, the physical processes that take place inside my body. So what we call love is just like a combination of chemicals and whatnot that are happening inside my body or the way my brain neurons fire in a particular way i don't actually have free will like the things that i do are just the they're nothing but the consequence of the neural cause and event chain of things that are taking place inside me. So that would be the, and they call it reductive physicalism because everything about me reduces down to physical processes and physical things. That's the nothing buttery side of it. But there are lots of people who affirm physicalism and reject that kind of reductive way of understanding what it means to be human. So I am just a physical

thing, but I'm a super complicated physical thing. And so I'm a physical thing that has a vital mental, emotional, spiritual life. And those things are all produced by the physical processes that happen inside me as a physical creature. They have to be because I'm just a physical thing. There isn't some other non-physical thing that I can appeal to. But they're real things in their own right. My emotional life isn't just a set of physical events. It is something that arises from the physical processes that emerges from it. There are lots of different terms that people use, but my emotional life is real. My spiritual life

is real. My social life is real. You can't just reduce it down to the physical aspects, even though they're still physicalists. So they're going to say just a physical creature. That's important to recognize because oftentimes when people hear physicalism, they think only about the reductive kind. And then when I try to talk about Christians who are physicalists, they get super confused. They're like, how could a Christian think that I'm nothing but these kind of physical processes? And it's because as far as I'm aware, actually, I'm sure there are Christians out there who fall into the reductive category, but the vast majority of them are going with some type of more complicated physicalism, non-reductive emergent processes or whatnot. So that I really do have a real spiritual life that matters.

And you really can't understand who I am apart from these higher level realities. On the dualism side of things, you're going to get much the same dynamic, right? So on one end of the spectrum, we could get an extreme form of dualism that often is associated with a hierarchy between the body and the soul, where the soul is what's actually good. I fundamentally am my soul. I happen to live in a body for a time. My body is often viewed in very negative terms. It might be like the cage in which my soul is trapped. And so this salvation becomes release from this evil material thing and the freedom of the soul living on forever in a disembodied state, as it were. And that's usually associated with Plato. Originally, people often put Descartes in that

category, although Descartes scholars contend that's not the best way to understand Descartes himself. But people usually talk about Cartesian or platonic dualism as that more kind of extreme form. But you can walk the spectrum all the way down to very holistic forms of dualism, where I am a body-soul composite. But the body and the soul are so tightly intertwined that I really can only be the creature that God created me to be in the interdependency of body and soul. And yeah, on the dualistic side, as long as you affirm, if I can, in my wording, I'm searching for the right wording here. If you affirm that the body and soul are as tethered as they are, they are still ontologically distinct. If I can say essences,

is that the right term? Once you, if you say that, then that would be on the, that would put you on the dualistic side, even if you emphasize your embodied nature as a human. Okay. Yeah. So I tend to think they're ontologically distinct and at least conceivably separable. That's kind of, that's a part of the ontological. If they are ontologically distinct, then it should be possible for them to be separated in some way. If it's not even conceivable that you could separate them, then I tend not to think that they're really ontologically distinct. But there are holistic dualists who don't think the body and soul ever

actually are separated. They've got them so tightly intertwined that when I die in a body and soul as, as, as an embodied and soul being, I go out of existence and would only exist again through, through resurrection. But in my mind, they still qualify as dualists because they think it's conceivable that they could be separated. They just don't think they ever actually are separated. So they would, they would have a hard time with the intermediate state, right?

They would. Yeah, they'd have the same problems in the intermediate state that the physicalists do. So if you're a physicalist, when you die, you're dead because the only thing that I am is just my body. So my body dies. I am dead. I no longer exist. If I get resurrected again, then I would exist insofar as my body has been resurrected and then you've got interesting questions about how do i know that's really me and yeah those are some experiments and yeah so by intermediate state we're talking about um between bodily death and resurrection yeah between bodily death and the the resurrect when jesus

returns he's going to raise the dead yep um so what happens between Between bodily death and the resurrect, when Jesus returns, he's going to raise the dead. Um, so what happens between your individual death and your body of the resurrection? I would say the dominant Christian view is that there is some sort of intermediate state whereby you, we exist apart from a, a body. Now there's various views on this. Some people, I think some physicalists, um, and if I and if I'm talking as if I sound like I know what I'm talking about, just picture a question mark on the back end of everything I'm saying. A physicalist has a range of options here. Some might say they're given a temporary body in their immediate, intermediate stay. Others, I think, is it FF Bruce that said that there's some kind of, I don't

know if this is the best term, but like a soul sleep to where when you personally die, it's almost like you fast forward to the resurrection. Boom, you're being raised from the dead. Or I think Anthony Hocum, I think, who sounds very physicalist when I was reading his book, kind of said, well, the intermediate state is sort of the exception to the rule. Yes. Okay, fine. We exist in a disembodied state, but that's not the norm. That's the exception to the rule. We don't draw our sort of theological anthropology for understanding human nature in the here and now from this exception to the rule, which I felt was kind of a punt, but a little, kind of honest too. I think, I don't know, you do have statements like in Philippians one and second Corinthians

five that do seem to point to some kind of, you know, when I die, I will be with Christ, which sounds like there's some sort of consciousness in that with Christness after, after death. But, um, uh, yeah, you know, is that everything I said? Would you say, yeah, that's not quite accurate? Or is that a good way of understanding? You're definitely on the right track. So historically, most Christians have been dualists of some kind or another.

And it largely on the intermediate state question that if something continues to exist after the death of the body, then you really have to qualify as some kind of a dualist. Okay. Right, because the two things got separated. Right. So they must be ontologically distinct, and therefore you're a dualist of some kind.

So even people now who want to affirm a holistic dualism, that's where I would put Anthony Hokem in that category. He doesn't want to really emphasize the importance of the body. Okay. But I continue to exist in an intermediate state. Therefore he has to be a kind of dualist. Okay. What they'll typically want to do then is talk about that. That is a broken state.

It's a consequence of the fall that body and soul got separated. So then the norm and what it really means to be human is to be the body soul integrated whole that God had in mind from creation that we see in resurrection and so that should really form our understanding of what it means to be a human person the we have to account for the intermediate state on that argument because of text like the one that you mentioned um but we don't view that as the norm for what it means to be human because that's an experience of death and therefore a consequence of the fall. And so then they'll often talk about that as being a broken state or whatnot that then needs to get healed in the resurrection.

That's why the resurrection is important. We don't want to stay in the intermediate state because that's a broken state. That's not actually the thing that we should aspire to as opposed to resurrection. Now, even on that, what I often ask people to think about is the way that we describe the intermediate state oftentimes, particularly we'll do this a lot of times in pastoral settings where we want to give somebody encouragement about a loved one who has passed or whatnot. And they'll talk about, well, this person in the immediate state, they're experiencing the fellowship of the saints and the worshiping God and bliss and joy and whatnot.

And we cast the intermediate state in such kind of lofty terms that I'm left wondering at the resurrection, what the body actually adds to that experience. It just kind of sounds like we've already got all the good stuff in the intermediate state. And so the right sure we'll affirm the resurrection because the Bible kind of tells us that we have to, but the body doesn't seem to make any significant difference in that. And I would say we, we take our passages and ideas and theology of the resurrection

and sort of map that upon the intermediate state. We do. I mean, most Christians, I would say, are kind of shocked when I tell them there is so little description of the intermediate state. I mean, my wife asks me this all the time. You know, if somebody dies, what do they do up there? I go, honestly, we have no clue. We have Philippians 1, I will be with Christ. That's a pretty general

statement. You have 2 Corinthians 5, which really, 5, 1 to 10, which is really a difficult passage. We're not sure when he's talking about intermediate state or resurrection, or if the whole thing is about resurrection or whole thing, intermediate state, a lot of complications there. You've got the parable in Luke 16, which is a parable, and I don't think it's trying to give a geography. You've got to be careful with that one. Yeah, really careful, you know. And then you have that reference in Revelation 6 or 7

where the soul's crying out in front of the altar. We're in apocalyptic literature, and I don't want to say that doesn't contribute to anything, but, you know, beyond that, we really don't have much. I mean, we have a lot on the resurrection, new creation, relatively speaking, but hardly anything about the intermediate state. Is there anything else I'm missing on that? No, no.

I mean, you have debated references in the Old Testament to how you understand death and whether or not the Old Testament even has a concept of, whether you can understand shiol, which is the term for death in the Old Testament, have any reference to intermediate state stuff. So you will get into some of those kinds of discussions. But you're right, the references that we do have, even if you read those texts in traditional sorts of ways where they are affirming an intermediate state, they don't give a lot of detail. And I do find it interesting, like, let's say you read the second

Corinthians passage traditionally that is an intermediate state. The one detail that you get from Paul out of that is that it's not good. Right. He's longing then to be clothed with the dwelling that is to come and whatnot. So none of this is like supporting our traditional way of describing the intermediate state as this like be-all and end-all of. And I know we don't need to do that, but we've got to watch our rhetoric there. Would it be accurate to say, well, as I look at the biblical data, if all we had was the Old Testament, we would all be on the physicalist side of things.

It seems to really use soul and spirit and body and so on very interchangeably, whereas there are some passages, in particular the 2 Corinthians 4.16 to 5.10, and a few other passages that seem to say, no, there does seem to be some kind of distinct ontological essence of a humanity called the soul or the inner person or whatever. Would that be accurate that the Old Testament would lean much more physical as whereas a few passages in the New Testament kind of seems to suggest more of a holistic dualism or is that? Yeah, the way that I like to describe it is I think we would be on safe ground to say that the Old Testament and the New Testament are both underdetermined when it comes to kind of specific ontologies of the human person. Okay.

That neither one of them kind of goes overboard and articulating like, here's how to think about the composition of the human person. So like I have heard people say that the old Testament is basically a physicalist view of the human person. The new Testament is basically a dualist view um and uh i don't know it sure sounds like we now have a transition like the old testament is teaching a particular ontology and the new testament comes along it's like no no that's the wrong ontology you should have this yeah um as opposed to i think both old testament new testament speak holistically about the human

person that's their emphasis is that we are embodied beings created to live in a material world creation. And for a future that, albeit we don't know a ton about the resurrected state either, but our bodies are important in this. So the narrative from beginning to end is about embodied beings. And so we shouldn't be surprised that we get an emphasis on embodiment in both Old Testament and New Testament. Then we get occasional kind of whispers or hints at, particularly when talking about death, that the reality of human ontology might be more complicated than that we're just embodied beings, that there might be more involved than that. I think you get more of those in the New Testament. And you have a few

possibilities in the Old Testament. Like, that there are some kind of hints that the Old Testament has a more complicated view of the human person than we sometimes like to think that it does. Yeah, right. Because so in the Old Testament, they have this idea that you can communicate with people after they're dead. That kind of only makes sense if you have at least somewhat of a complicated ontology of the human person so they can continue to exist after death. Apart from that, I'm not sure what to do

with all the biblical commands against necromancy, like communing with dead people. If you don't think it's possible, or if people generally didn't't think it's possible, or if like people generally didn't think that it was possible, you wouldn't have to keep telling them to stop doing it. Well, and the witch at Endor in 1 Samuel 28, you know, was it Samuel? Yeah, Saul was freaked out because he actually saw Samuel. Samuel was actually there. Yeah. Actually, I love reading both physicalists and dualists on that passage because pretty much everybody is like, yeah, this is a weird story. We're not entirely certain what's going on here.

But yeah, so you get hints like that, that even in the Old Testament, there are suggestions that the reality of what it means to be a human person might be a bit more complicated than that we're just bodies. And I think you get more of those hints in the New Testament so that when you put the whole picture together, that's why I said, if you push on me hard enough, I will end up aligning with certain forms of holistic dualism because of those kinds of hints and echoes.

But I do think that when we talk about what it means to be human, we should sound every bit as embodied as the physicalist position wants us to. Because that's how the Bible talks about people most of the time. I would say the default kind of folk Christian, popular Christian assumption is way on the dualistic, probably often Cartesian land. Even some of our hymns, you know, it's like, oh my gosh, this looks like they're echoing, you know, Gnostic literature from the second century. So I could see where you would want

to pull people back to more of a, you know, even if you land on the holistic dualism side, where you would probably sound physicalist because you're probably challenging a lot of these kind of unbiblical views of hyper-dualism. Yes. So on a spectrum of one being, one being a physicalist, a hundred being a Gnostic, you're saying you would be somewhere in the 55, 60. I would be as close to that line as I can get probably. Okay. Right. Okay. Well, where would I, when I read Joel Green, I would, I would say Joel Green would be a non-reductive physicalist pretty unashamedly.

Would that be accurate or? That's what I would say as well. My understanding is Joel has actually not tended to officially align himself with specific ontologies, right? So non-reductive physicalism is its own kind of category within the conversation. Where something like Nancy Murphy would align herself. Joel's done a lot of biblical work that resonates with the kinds of things that people are doing who affirm non-reductive physicalism.

But at least I haven't seen Joel in writing come right out and say and I am a non-reductive physicalist yeah I didn't see that either at least the one book I read of his but yeah or yeah if anything he's just pushing us to elevate the body more than more than we typically do I would imagine too like since in the with the recent advances of neuroscience where, goodness, I mean, you could find material shaping or emphasis or rootedness to so many behaviors and so on. Has that brought people back to more of a on the physicalist side or maybe not on the physicalist end but have have kind of pushed people away from a more radical dualism or um to an extent so i got kind of a two-fold answer on that i mean one is uh if you kind of look in the history of christian reflection on this it's not that difficult to find people that we would typically put in the strongly

dualist category who have a very deep sense of how intertwined body and soul are so even if you go back and read gregory of nyssa's on the making of humanity uh he's got a fun passage in there where he's not where he knows full well like if you hit people on the head hard enough it's going to impact things that he thinks of as being associated with the soul right they're not going to think terribly well um it's hard for them to exercise free will if you've crushed their skull um so so he knows full well that things that he thinks of as as soulish capacities free will morality spirituality whatnot are directly impacted by what you do with the body and kind of the health and well-being of the body is inseparable from the health and the well-being of the soul interest that's gregory uh wow that Yeah. Gregory of Nyssa. Yep. And the,

if you look at the history of kind of the literature on soul care, historically, it's not focused exclusively on like praying and reading your Bible. It recognizes the importance of physical well-being and health. It's aware that we can pay too much attention to the body and the body can become a distraction from the concerns of the Christian life and spiritual formation and whatnot. But it, generally speaking that literature actually does a fairly good job of saying,

no, that we are embodied beings. And those two things kind of have to be held together. So I would say some of what we're doing now is we're rediscovering what has been in the Christian tradition. We haven't always done a great job with it. So don't mishear me as saying, oh yeah, we've always done a fabulous job emphasizing the body. No, no. But if you read the literature, you can find voices who are saying the same kinds of things throughout the tradition. And we're rediscovering some of that. Another thing that I hear people say on occasion that probably is true in places that I want to be careful with is sometimes people portray those

Christians who have affirmed, who have affirmed various kinds of physicalism, as if they're just capitulating to modern science, that modern science has kind of taught us about the brain and how the brain controls all behavior and whatnot. And so that what Christian physicalists are doing is they're really just making the Bible bow to the demands of modern science. And I don't think that's a particularly generous or even accurate way of reading what most of the Christian physicalists who are engaged in the biblical text seriously are actually doing. They're certainly reading the text in awareness of what modern science is doing. But they're also pointing out that the biblical texts are, in fact, more embodied than we have tended to read them. fact, more embodied than we have tended to read them. And that maybe modern science,

we might be dealing with a bit more of a kind of a Galileo moment, where modern science came along and gave us an opportunity to take another look at the text, right? So we used to think that the earth was the center of the universe and everything revolved around the earth. And then Galileo and others come along and say, I'm pretty sure that's not what's actually going on. And then we went back and we read the texts, not because we thought we had to reinterpret the texts in light of what Galileo and others were discovering. But the scientific developments gave us the opportunity to look at the texts and to realize that they weren't saying what we thought they were saying. I think that's a more generous way of understanding what people are doing in the

physicalist conversation. The science is giving them an opportunity to take another look at the text and they're saying, I'm not sure these texts say what we always thought that they said. Now, I'll admit on some of the intermediate state texts that we've talked about, I'm not convinced that their, their ways of reading the texts are the best ways of reading the texts, or at least not always the best way of reading the texts. But I do think they're engaging the text seriously, and that they're not just trying to like twist their reading of the biblical texts so that it will support science, because science is what's actually driving the car. I don't think that's what's going on.

it's science because science is what's actually driving the car. I don't think that's what's going on. You also have interesting, well, I mean, when you look at like early Judaism, you do have Greco-Roman or quasi even Platonic type ways of thinking introduced to especially diaspora Judaism, Judaism that sort of existed and flourished and grew outside of Palestine to where you read some Jewish literature. And I mean, like the wisdom of Solomon or even some. Yeah, I mean, even one Enoch and others that that aren't that do try to integrate some kinds of Greco-Roman platonic views of human nature into a more Jewish worldview. So when you get to the New Testament, you have Paul that can, you know,

second Corinthians five does sound very platonic. Like I don't, I actually think it's less platonic than some people make it out to be. But it's yeah, they're there. He is trying to communicate to people that are steeped in that kind of worldview and categories they understand, even if he's kind of subtly deconstructing some of those. But I want to take a more practical turn. So there's two, as you were talking, as we're talking,

there's two kind of really practical topics, and each one of these could exhaust the rest of our time together. But I would love to talk with you about trans-related questions that people have, And then also just questions surrounding like health, body, diet, exercise, like, you know, things that traditionally have been seen as not spiritual activities. These are just kind of, you know, awe spiritual. They're good if you want, whatever. But, you know, given the maybe renewed emphasis on the human body, what are the implications of that for diet, exercise and so on? So trans issues. And I don't expect you to necessarily answer these questions, but I would love for you to help us ask the right questions and maybe be encouraged to dive into theological anthropology more thoroughly so

that we can even be in a place to answer these questions. So let's begin with just the idea of being born in the wrong body. Now, not everybody even likes that phrase. A lot of trans people say, look, I don't like that phrase. That's Gnostic. That's not me. But it still is a very popular phrase. And there's even a documentary called Born in the Wrong Body and everything. So what would you, if somebody says that I, is it possible for somebody to be born in the wrong body?

Help us to think through that, some assumptions there. Yeah, well, I mean, I'll admit the first thing that I hear, or the first thing that comes to mind when I hear people talk that way, is that there is an intriguing correlation between that way of thinking about trans issues and historically what we have considered to be certain kinds of actually unhealthy forms of dualism. healthy forms of dualism, right? Because that very sentence locates identity apart from the body, right? There's a fundamental I, and the I identity, right, is what really matters here. And it is an identity that is established independently of the body, right? Otherwise you couldn't say I'm born in the wrong body. Right. And that historically has been what we've associated with certain very strong forms of dualism where fundamentally I am my soul and I'm only temporarily housed or located in this

particular body. Well, on that form of dualism, that kind of a sentence can make sense, right? Cause my body is external to who I fundamentally am as an immaterial soul. Um, and so, uh, maybe I did kind of end up in the wrong body. Uh, kind of like, I don't know. I came home late at night. I wasn't paying attention. I walked into my neighbor's house. Oh, look, I'm in the wrong house. But if you do have a more integrated, holistic understanding of the human person, then that sentence becomes very difficult to say like that, because my body is not extrinsic to who I am into my identity. It's intrinsic. And if what we were saying kind of in the earlier part of the conversation is right, and that we need to be much more holistic in how we think about the human person, then I can't separate body from identity in any meaningful sense. Now, that doesn't resolve trans questions, because it doesn't say anything about how my self-identity relates to my body and how those two things can be tightly intertwined and interconnected.

relates to my body and how those two things can be tightly intertwined and interconnected. But I do think it would challenge at least what sounds like a dualistic way of framing up the issue and kind of relocate it more and know my body is fundamental to my identity in such a way that I have to wrestle with it. I can't kind of separate it out. Okay. No, that's helpful. So I'm just trying to look at it, refract the question through various angles. I mean, if, could somebody, and I'm going to ask this as if it's the first time we're talking about this, but Mark and I have actually a dialogue about this very question. So let me pretend like I'm thinking about it on the spot, but I'll pretend like I have a good answer. Is it conceivable that somebody could hold to not a Cartesian or Gnostic kind of dualism,

but a more soft dualism, a holistic dualism that still views the soul and body as ontologically distinct entities? Yes, they're they're composite they're fused together whatever but can see your phrase at least conceivably we can see these as still different essences in the person and if you throw a fall kind of narrative like through the fall is it possible to hold to a soft dualism and those different entities become jumbled through the fall to where the soul, the spirit, the immaterial part of you is one thing and the body is something else? Yeah. Certainly, I do think it's conceivable for somebody to do that. Because, of course, the fall complicates all kinds of questions when we think about what it means to be human.

course the fall complicates all kinds of questions when we think about what it what it means to be human um so if i were to think kind of in a a parallel setting um where so traditionally we have thought of the soul as um at least possessing the capacity for rationality um or rationality has at times just been the definition of what it means to have a human soul um So that if things are working the way that they're supposed to be, then my rational soul should be linked to a body that is capable of supporting and displaying that rationality so that I am, at least ideally speaking, the embodied rational creature that I am. But we know that in the world that we actually live in, that doesn't always work out that way. That people are born with bodies that are impaired in various kinds of ways, and sometimes severely so. So that the body, for various reasons, is not capable of supporting or displaying the kind of rationality that we associate with the human person.

Traditionally, though, we have still wanted to say that the soul remains a rational thing. It's just the person is no longer able to express that rationality because of certain kinds of bodily impairments. So now you'd say that there's a rational soul that is joined to, for lack of a better phrase, a body that has been impacted by the fall. So a non-rational body, that's not the right way to say it, but I think you get the idea of where I'm going here. Somebody could use that same framework, still wanting to affirm a very holistic kind of dualism and say that the soul is, I guess in this sense, I'd have to say gendered in some kind of way. So maybe I have a male soul that should have been linked to and express itself through a male body.

But because of the consequences of the fall or whatnot, something got crossed and I end up with a soul that's embodied in ways that don't align well with the nature of the soul. Now let me frame all of that around. Is it conceivable that someone could make that kind of an argument? Yes. I think it's conceivable and I wouldn't be terribly surprised if I bumped into people who either have argued that or at least think that way about how kind of body soul dynamics work. I do think it still fits really awkwardly in a holistic dualist kind of framework with a tight interconnection between body and soul. And so I do

wonder if it's going to have a natural home in that ontology of the human person that still feels it feels more cartesian in how it thinks about body soul relationships but conceivably somebody could make that argument it also does depend if i'm understanding the question correctly on the idea that souls themselves have distinct genders or sexes, whatever language that you want to work. Otherwise the argument doesn't work. Right. You'd need to have a gendered soul in a body that's gendered differently or a sex soul in a body that's sexed differently. And so I'd want to ask some questions about whether that's the right way to

understand how gender and sexuality relate to the soul and talk about male souls and female souls but yes i think it's conceivable i just think there are some questions that we could ask about whether it's the right way to do things yeah yeah my i guess my yeah thank you for that i and i and i i haven't really seen too many people um make a really informed argument in that direction it's more just kind of like an assumption, like born in the wrong body, or yes, I got a male body, but I have a female soul and all this stuff. But it does. Let's just a couple, I guess, pushbacks to that possible view. Number one,

even if you say, even if you say, no, the soul is sexed, and the body sexed. And if there's, even if you say that, you would have to argue for that. I think that's a tough case to have. But even if you could argue for that, why would you favor the soul over the body in cases where there's incongruence? That seems to demand a hierarchy between soul and body that is very Cartesian, and I would say not really Christian. So even if you could say the soul sex and body sex, why not prefer the body over the soul? Why just automatically assume that the soul rules out?

But secondly, I don't, this is where terminology in the trans conversation is so convoluted. And this is across the liberal, moderate, progressive side. Few people even define or even know, seem to know what they're saying when they use terms. So, for instance, the one point of agreement across anybody who doesn't believe in a flat earth is that, and let me word this really carefully, that non-intersex persons are sexually dimorphic. Okay. That's just, I mean, nobody just, the most radical feminists would say, yes, that's true. But that's, you know, we import meaning on our female bodies and there's all kinds of social constructions around. I'm not denying any of that.

But I'm saying there is a bare fact that the human species is sexually dimorphic for, and I'll just use the phrase non-intersex persons because people automatically want to jump to intersex and then that takes a different direction. Non-intersex humans are sexually dimorphic. The terms that we typically use to describe that sexual dimorphism is male and female, not man or woman, not masculinity, femininity, but male and female. Those are just biological facts. So to even, and those to be either male or female, again, this is not disputed in the scientific community, is based on several factors, chromosomes, what the presence or absence of a Y chromosome, different structures of reproduction, whether they're impaired or not is irrelevant. Just are you structured toward reproduction as a male or female? And then things like endocrine systems that in fact produce secondary sex characteristics. Like again,

these are, I'm talking about things that are just not disputed. Everything else from there is up for debate. So all that to say, it would be, I think, scientifically, even logically inaccurate to even use the category of male, female and apply that to something that's immaterial. By definition, male and female are bodily descriptions. And if you say, no, no, I think they should be used broadly. I'm like, OK, that's fine. That's not. But OK, so what term should we use to describe the sexual dimorphism of non-intersex humans? Because the fact that non-intersex humans are sexually dim So to say that the soul is sexed, I think it's just completely inaccurate. That sounds bold, but I'm going to stick by it.

If you say that the body is sexed and the soul is, say, gendered, that there's masculinity and femininity. Okay, I think there we're on more terminologically sound grounds. I think that's problematic because now we're importing cultural stereotypes into all these things. For instance, a biological female who may like, maybe they like sports. They don't like to wear dresses. They like to hang out with guys, not girls. They don't like to go to, you know, wait a minute. And if they say, okay, therefore I have a feminine soul, but a male body or vice versa, whatever.

wait a minute. And if they say, okay, I'm therefore I have a feminine soul, but a male body or vice versa, whatever. I'm like, wait a minute. How are you not relying upon these cultural stereotypes of masculinity and femininity for your anthropological case for a male soul, female body or whatever. These are my thinking out loud thoughts. So I would push back, poke out holes. What questions have I? Yeah, no. So, um, I mean the, the distinction between the term sex and gender as you know is pretty well established in the literature um there are people on both sides of the conversation

who don't like the distinction for very different kinds of reasons right so on one side of the conversation you have people who worry about the sex gender distinction because they want to emphasize the ways in which um sex itself is culturally shaped um so you know they'll maybe talk about that there is no such thing as kind of male in the abstract even with respect to the male body um because the body always has to be received and perceived yeah um it doesn't exist thing in its own right um so they they want to collapse a little bit the sex gender distinction because they want to say it's all kind of culturally constructed in deep and important ways. And there's a lot of validity that we want to be mindful of.

People on the other side want to critique the distinction for the opposite reason. They want to say that what we think of as gender is inseparably related to the sex body side of it. And they're going to qualify as what we consider more to be gender essentialists, that the male body and certain male characteristics should go together. And so to call one of them culturally constructed and the other one kind of biological is an invalid distinction right you got people on both sides that are saying i'm not super excited about this um uh i i use the term sex and gender in distinct ways like you just did um oftentimes i'll say biological sex rather than just sex to make it super obvious what i'm talking about yeah and i will use the term gender to talk more about the ways in which we

perceive and perform our maleness or our femaleness as it were. And I do that partly because I just find the distinction helpful. I think kind of no matter where you land on this, it's useful to recognize that there is in fact a difference between kind of very embodied, biological, is in fact the difference between kind of very embodied, biological, reproductive oriented kinds of things and the way that I perceive and receive, sorry, receive and perform those things. Even if I think there's like a super tight relationship between them, I can still say that there's a conceptual distinction there such that having a terminological distinction would help me talk about these things.

And then I just point out to people that it's actually become quite common to use sex and gender in those kinds of ways. So I don't always find terminological battles worth fighting to say, all right, that's how we use the terms, then we can talk about it that way. So then that gets to the point that you were making of, should we talk about the souls as sexed? Well, if that's how we're defining the terms, and if that's how the terms are used, then I do think that's probably a mistaken way of talking. Wherever you land on this issue, that souls are not themselves the kinds of things that have biological reproductive systems. Right, exactly. Right. So that would be the wrong terminology to apply there. So the more interesting conversation is our souls gendered. And that, of course, gets into a bigger question about what is gender. Is gender a thing or is gender completely a cultural concept? Is it some combination of the two? Is gender a set of properties? is gender a set of properties? So that to be masculine, I guess my quote, when somebody says that like a soul is male, I'm never entirely certain what we mean by that is, do we mean that

that particular soul expresses a certain kinds of qualities in distinct ways? So that male there is a category of characteristics. Or do they think of the soul as actually having some single quality called maleness that makes it male and not female? And I'm never sure what that single quality is. When people use the term gender, and I've been guilty of this,

I don't think people are that clear what they even mean when they talk about gender. And I'm not talking about people that conflate sex and gender. They really don't are aware of the distinctions. I'm talking about people that do know the distinctions and yet they keep using the term gender in ways that I don't, if I keep asking, what is gender? Okay. What is that? But what is, what is that? I end up getting into this kind of foggy room of unclarity.

I mean, the most simplest way I've seen to describe the difference is, you know, there's biological sex and then gender can be thought of as like masculinity and femininity. That's oversimplified. But I just, yes, males and females are generally speaking that there's a lot of differences, but they're not absolutely absolute differences. Women are more nurturing than men. Men typically are more aggressive than women. Men would much rather watch the Super Bowl and women on average might prefer the halftime show. But these are generalities.

These aren't absolutes. There's not a single behavioral trait within the sexual dimorphism of humankind that are absolute. So when people say, no, my brain is female, or my soul is female, even though I have a male body, and I ask them to, okay, what do you mean? Or how do you know? Unpack that. I've never experienced anybody that can unpack that without going into cultural stereotypes well i i'm interested in these things and i've always felt this way or whatever and it's like well how are that's that's i i don't disagree with any of that but um this i mean this is why a

lot of feminists that you know are outraged over this conversation because some narratives are seem to be resurrection, these old stereotypes, and giving them kind of like foundational status and what it means to be human. So I don't know. I'm really trying to sort through this. And it's hard because I don't see a lot of people being ultra clear what they mean when they're talking about these things, you know.

Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. So to some extent, the conversation does tend to often assume kind of the old old men are from mars women from venus yeah way of thinking about the genders where the genders are clearly distinct um in almost obvious sorts of ways yeah um and uh it is interesting how much that thinking still crops up in the conversation, even though really nobody who's working on gender thinks of gender as actually being like that, that they're not completely separable and distinct,

in at least not that kind of naive sort of way. So that if you're going to look at gender and the qualities and characteristics that we associate with it, I think you actually have on one of your recent blog posts, you did one of the, it kind of showed a bunch of the charts where they're plotting kind of characteristics as they're exemplified by men and women. And you end up with these kind of overlapping ways of plotting it. So on say aggression, if you kind of plot aggressive characteristics of women

and aggressive characteristics of men, you actually get a fair bit of overlap between the two charts. And the averages might be slightly off so that aggressive behavior, depending of course on how you define it, might be slightly more common among men than it is among women. But if you actually look at the charts themselves, the vast majority of men and women overlap with one another on those charts. So even if, even if males, I'll just be really specific, or even if males are generally speaking, on average, more aggressive than women, being aggressive doesn't determine whether you're

male or not. And I think that's- No, clearly not with that much overlap. Right, right, right. Yeah. And so interesting, if you look at the kind of where most men fall and where most women fall on almost all of those charts, they're actually fairly close together. Yeah. But if you look at the spread of like all men on the chart, there's a huge variation from one end of the spectrum to the other end of the spectrum. And so what the charts actually show is that there's far more diversity in what it means to be male or female than there is difference between men and women with respect to any of those attributes. It's almost like if you took the hundred tallest people on earth, they'd be all men, right? But take the spectrum, take the shortest and tallest man, I mean, you're going to get a massively wide spectrum.

And so it's intriguing to me that we focus so much on the differences between the sexes or the genders in this instance. And we talk a lot less about the differences within the kind of diversity that exists within being a man or a woman or however we want to use our

terminology. Right. Yeah. Well, let's shift gears. I'll be able to talk a few more minutes left. Let's talk about, yeah, health, diet, and exercise. And I don't even, I haven't read anything that you've talked about this, but if we're going to say that, man, as we need to, maybe we've overemphasized, you know, the soul to the,

to the, you know, and, and neglected the body in terms of spirituality. And as we're trying to integrate those two, what does this mean for things like what we eat, how we, yeah. what does this mean for things like what we eat, how we, yeah. Yeah. So a fun thing I like to do with my students in one of my classes is I'll ask them to brainstorm with me all of the things they think are relevant for spiritual formation, spiritual growth. And I cheat a little bit cause I use the word spiritual in the question intentionally because I know it's going to skew them in a very particular direction. And so we'll brainstorm and we'll list on the board and you get all kind of the

expected things, right? Just read your Bible, pray, go to church, whatnot. And I think in only one instance, without exception, I get all of those kinds of things and nothing about nutrition or sleep or exercise or whatnot, right? It's all these kind of spiritual practices. And so then I ask the students, and it's particularly ironic because often I'm doing this with students who are preparing to be counselors. And so I'll ask them why they didn't list these things that they themselves emphasize as being super important when they're working with people in counseling settings. And I'll tend to get kind of one of two different responses. I'll get some students going, oh yeah, you're right. I can't believe I missed that. And then we get to have an interesting conversation about why the word spiritual in Christian parlance makes us think of these kinds of

highly disembodied practices, why we don't think of the body as being a spiritual thing. When biblically, the language of spirit or spiritual just means rightly oriented to the things of the spirit. So in that sense, my body can be spiritual if my body is being rightly used for the purposes of spirits and the kingdom of god and whatnot that is a spiritual practice even i'm talking about my body so that's a fun conversation like that but what i actually get from students um as much if not more is a sense that um those embodied practices like diet and exercise and sleep and whatnot, they are important, but they're what I call instrumentally important for spiritual formation. In other words,

if I don't exercise or sleep well, I won't be able to pray or read my Bible effectively because I'm going to be falling asleep or I won't be focused or whatnot. So what really matters for me to be the spiritually formed person that I need to be are these spiritual practices. Those are the intrinsically important things. These embodied things are instrumentally necessary, right? So you get a bit of the hierarchy. As you say, that sounds very hierarchical. Yep. They're the top important things. all the other stuff are only necessary and important insofar as they contribute to the more necessary and more important things um and so then we can kind of have a fun conversation about why we think that way um and what's interesting to me is if i rephrase the

question and instead of asking people what is important for spiritual formation, I ask people what's important for human flourishing. I get a completely different set of responses. And people are very quick to talk about what we think of as more embodied practices as intrinsic to and essential for human flourishing, which leads to where I'm actually going with the whole practice is why do we think of human flourishing and spiritual formation as different things so so that spiritual formation is all about these spiritual practices and human flourishing is like wonderfully holistic and

embodied and whatnot um and uh i want to kind of challenge that framework um yeah the human flourishing is actually what we're after in all of this. And human flourishing just is about spiritual formation because again, if the term spiritual just means to be rightly oriented to the things of the spirit, then we flourish as human persons, holistically and embodiedly. When we are as whole persons rightly oriented to the things of the spirit. Your understanding of spiritual is, I mean, it resonates with 1 Corinthians 15. It talks about the, is it the spiritual body of Christ or something, or will be raised?

Yeah. If you wrongly interpret. We get the soul-spirit distinction in 1 Corinthians. Yeah, if you wrongly interpret spiritual there, you think it's not a material body, which is just goes against, I mean, he's really going back to Genesis 2, 7, right? That the spirit of God animates. So it's something to do with the fruit of the spirit conversation, the spirit flesh dichotomy that Paul's got going on in Galatians, which we often end up reading in these kinds of highly dualistic sorts of ways that the flesh refers to my body and the spirit refers to the immaterial aspect of me um and if a close reading of galatians should make it pretty clear that's

just not what paul's after uh that flesh and spirit are much more orientation terms and that to live a flesh life is to live as a whole person oriented away from the things of god to live a spirit life is to live as a whole person oriented toward the things of the spirit. And that that just is what spirit language means. The spiritual gifts, Paul's language there, those aren't disembodied gifts. Those are kind of whole person gifts that are to be used for the purposes of the spirit, given by the spirit for the purposes of the spirit. That's what makes them spiritual, notembodied so you kind of have to we have to reclaim the word spiritual yeah and stop associating it with immateriality and start associating it

more with being whole persons rightly oriented toward god so you would say that i mean like like so we shouldn't view diet exercise exercise, health, sleep, drinking. I got my water here. I just saw somebody say that one of the things he's done that has alleviated or helped him battle his depression is drinking two gallons of water a day or something, you know. aren't instrumental toward the higher spiritual byproduct of the things, but that a healthy, well-oiled body is in and of itself part of the spiritual discipline, a good for our human nature. Yes, absolutely.

Yeah, that's good. Well, Hey, I'm taking you. There is a concern, right? There are always concerns on both ends of these things. And so one of the things I try to be mindful of is I'm really trying to emphasize the importance of the body is that we do live in a culture that emphasizes the body an awful lot and does so in ways that are themselves destructive and unhealthy. And one of the things that the tradition does for us really well, sometimes overly strongly, but it's. But the Christian tradition is very aware of ways in which our bodies can become an

overemphasis and a distraction from who we're supposed to be and how we actually flourish as human persons. So there is actually a lot in our culture about diet and exercise that I don't want to affirm and support. Sure, sure. kind of pushing way too far in the other direction. And so I think we, we need kind of a balanced nuance way of talking about human flourishing that encompasses the entire person without kind of over glorifying kind of certain kinds of overly externalized values and emphasis on beauty badly

defined yeah no that's how yeah it's kind of like sex like sex is a good thing created by god but uh our culture generally speaking can very much idolize it and and and frame it in such skewed ways um yeah so certainly with the body that can happen as well. Uh, Mark, thanks so much for being on the show. Uh, tell us where people can find you. And also, um, what, I mean, I, I, yeah, I've got a few books you've written here. The one I would highly recommend if people want the, maybe not one, but let's just say the first Mark Cortez book to read is called Theological Anthropology, A Guide for the Perplexed. And I love this just

because it is more of an overview because we are dealing with really complicated, in-depth categories. I mean, I love your book, Resourcing Theological Anthropology, but I feel like I would recommend reading this one first, just so people can get their arms around the conversation, then go to something more specific. So Theological, The Guide for the Perplexed, Resourcing Theological Anthropology. What are some other things you've written? Yeah, so Resourcing Theological Anthropology is actually kind of the second of two books that go together. The first one being Christological Anthropology in Historical Perspective. I'm an academic, you can tell by my book titles. And the reason that they kind of go together, both books are asking this question about the relationship between Christology

and anthropology. What does it mean to say that Jesus reveals what it means to be human? The first one does that in entirely historical perspective. It just looks at a number of theologians throughout history who brought Christology and anthropology together in a close conversation, just looks at what they did. And it's kind of a, let's get tutored by the people throughout history. The second one, resourcing, is much more kind of my way of thinking biblically and theologically about the conversation.

So the way I've described it before is the first book was actually kind of my homework for the second book. I didn't want to do my own constructive proposal until I had kind of taken a look at how other people had done it. And Zondervan, who's the publisher for both of those books basically let me publish my homework, the first book, so that I was well prepared to write the second book. Okay, cool. Yeah. On the theological anthropology side of things, those would be kind of the three

key ones, assuming that you don't want to go back and read the dissertation, which is very dissertation-y. Um, uh, then I've been involved in editing, um, uh, a number of collected essays on books. Uh, so I've got one that's a reader in theological anthropology. So it's just kind of what, uh, snippets of things that people have said about what it means to be human from a Christian perspective over time. There's that one. We do the Wheaton Theology Conference here every year. Yeah. A couple of years back, we did one on the sacraments and church unity and the extent to which we can be united as Christians around something like the Lord's Supper. So it's called

Come Let Us Eat Together, Sacraments and the Unity of the Church. It was a lot of fun. We brought a variety of Protestants, Eastern Orthodox and Catholic scholars together to wrestle with the question of church unity, specifically around the sacraments. Interesting. That's awesome. And people can find you. Do you have a website or is this part of the Wheaton faculty page or do you have a separate

website? Yeah, so I do. MarkCortez.com. It has been down for a while now because I've been distracted by life for a little bit. I actually really hoping to get that up and running again this year. And that was just a fun way for me to think theologically in a different mode than I typically am able to and trying to write theology more accessibly than I often do in my more academic books. So hopefully that will be up and running soon. That's just markcortez.com. Um, and then I'm on Facebook and Twitter and, um, academia.

I don't do Pinterest or a Snapchat or whatnot. I have two teenage daughters and we routinely talk about social media and the extent to which we want our lives to be controlled by them. Oh, man. We don't always have the same perspective on how that question should be answered. Yeah, man, that could be part, too.

The theological anthropology of social media. Is it good for our humanity or not? Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Well, thanks so much, Mark, for being on the show. I'll have to do this again sometime. I appreciate it, Preston. I would enjoy doing that and thank you for having me on. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Well, thanks so much, Mark, for being on the show. I'll have to do this again sometime. I appreciate it,

Preston. I would enjoy doing that. And thank you for having me on. Cool. Okay. Thank you.