Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1135: Resurrection and a Christian Theology of the Body: Dr. Beth Felker Jones

Episode Date: December 7, 2023

Dr. Beth Felker Jones holds the PhD from Duke University and teaches theology at Northern Seminary in Chicagoland, where she lives with her family. She is the author of many books and writes regularly at Church Blogmatics at bethfelkerjones.substack.com. In this podcast conversation, we talk about a theology of the body, our future resurrected state, how resurrection should shape our ethics today, and different ways in which our culture (and the church) assumes a strong dualisitc view of the body/soul. Support Theology in the Raw through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw

Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. My guest today is Dr. Beth Felker-Jones, who holds a PhD from Duke University and she teaches theology at Northern Seminary in Chicagoland, in Northern Chicago. She's the author of several books, including The Marks of His Wounds, Gender Politics and Bodily Resurrection with Oxford University Press. A really good book, a short book on theology of sex called Faithful, A Theology of Sex. And her most recent book is the second edition of her book, Practicing Christian Doctrine, An Introduction to Thinking and Living Theologically. Really enjoyed this conversation. Beth is an expert in all things related to the theology of the body. And that's where we start

off. And then we kind of wander around in different areas that kind of came up in the middle of the conversation. So I really, really enjoyed this conversation and appreciated her perspective very much. So please welcome to the show, the one and only Dr. Beth Felker-Jones. Beth, thanks so much for being on the show. As I said, offline, been a fan of your work from distance for a while now. So this is, I want to say long overdue, but I'm excited we're having this conversation. Thanks for having me. Glad to be here. So I came across your work, well, your focus on the theology of the body, which also spilled over into just more of a broader theology of sexuality. You have a short book on sexuality that was fantastic. Let's go back. How

did you get into biblical scholarship? Was this something you always wanted to get into? And then what piqued your interest in specifically about the theology of the body? Yeah, it's definitely something I have found continually interesting for decades now. And it continues to seem to be such an important set of questions for our culture to think about the body. I got into it. Worked in college as a church camp counselor. Experienced some kind of vague call to some kind of ministry. Headed off to seminary and sure that would be pretty quickly

in seminary, a combination of what I was loving and not loving. Let me decide that I felt like I wanted to teach and write. So I focused in that direction. And then during my PhD work, a personal thing and a learning thing happened, which got me into the theology of the body. The personal thing was I was pregnant with our first child, which was not our plan, but was delightful, a delightful surprise. embodied being and a gendered being, right, in the classroom, in my program, in church, in ways that maybe I hadn't thought about quite before. And then the academic thing was just, I was not new to Christianity, but what kept seeming new to me as I studied Christianity was the body. So the incarnation, the resurrection, creation,

all these major Christian themes have to do with the goodness of the body, God's good intentions for the body, divine intention of embodiment, right? It's not a mistake. It's a good. All of that was new to me, or at least I hadn't paid attention to it in quite that way before. All of that was new to me, or at least I hadn't paid attention to it in quite that way before. And so between pregnancy and just encountering doctrine, I ended up writing about the resurrection of the body for my dissertation, and I've been thinking about it ever since. You wrote about the theological implications of the resurrection of the body and how that affects how we view embodiment today. I mean, obviously,

we're all going to be resurrected. We're going to get a new body. Everybody knows that. But I think you said, okay, what does that say to how we think about the body today? Is that correct? Yeah. So often when we think about the body, we go to creation, right? Which is a good place to go. But I think in some ways, it's even more significant to look at God's good final intentions for all things and how that too includes the body. And if we think about the kingdom as something which is already breaking in, then the theology of the resurrection has something to do with our bodies right here, right now. I think my favorite verse in scripture is the very last verse of 1 Corinthians 15. Paul's been talking about resurrection, resurrection, new bodies, all this. And then here we get, therefore, your labor's not in vain, right? Because of the resurrection of the body, what we're doing right here and right now matters. It's a kingdom matter. So yes, creation, but also

resurrection. So Oliver O'Donovan wrote a book, Resurrection and the Moral Order. Is that kind of, I think, I have a hard time understanding him. Thank you. How do you do that? Okay, all good. Because everybody loves him. They talk about him like he's like the theological pope of whatever, but I'm like, I think he's awesome when I understand him, but that's less than what I do. Did he kind of develop that framework or just further it? Because that was kind of his point, right? As far as I understand. in theology and church history. When I was writing the dissertation, I was really interested in what I guess now we could call some earlier work from Sarah Coakley about the resurrection of the body and the church fathers and how that might help us think about things now. So I don't think it's unique to any one thinker, but I do think it's at the same time

something a lot of us haven't thought about. What do we, okay, so let's go Resurrection Body 101. What do we know about our future resurrected bodies and what don't we know, if that's a fair way to frame it? That is a fun question. There's lots of assumptions. I feel like in the era of evangelicalism,

there's lots of ideas, but then half the time, like, well, where is that in the text? I think we know a little more than we might think because there's two aspects to resurrection, right? One, which has already happened, Jesus, and one, which is future, us, right? But scripture makes it really clear that those two are linked so tightly that when we see Jesus's resurrection, we're learning also about the general resurrection and God's good future for all things. So first we can look at Jesus and observe some things. things, right? And the way resurrection works in general in scripture is that it involves both continuity and transformation. So, Jesus' resurrected body is continuous with his pre-resurrection body, right? He's the same guy, same hand, same mouth, same all those things, right? But also it has been transformed into new creation, right? And so

we see continuity. He eats fish. He loves his friends. He still does his father's work, right? But we also see a transformation. Sometimes people recognize him. Sometimes they don't. He goes through walls. How transformed is that? I don't know. He does miracles before too. So, but there are these sort of inks of transformation with, I think, a really strong gospel emphasis on that continuity, right? The tomb is empty. He eats fish. Like he's, he's a body is what the gospels seem to be saying. And then the one place in scripture where we have much about the general resurrection beyond that is first Corinthians 15. And Paul too, I think gives us continuity and transformation. The metaphor he uses is a seed, right? The body now is the seed that is sown,

the resurrection body is what will grow. That metaphor is maybe a little more emphasis on transformation than continuity. Like there's a pretty big transformation between a seed and a berry bush or something, right? But it is continuity and physical continuity still. And then Paul talks about transformation mostly in ways that free us from sin and death, right? So from corruptibility to incorruptibility, from glory to honor, selfishness to being led by the Holy Spirit. So anyway, yes, we know things, but also not all the things. And I think the Christian tradition has rightly said, don't try to over-imagine. It's good to imagine, but it might be a little much to say like

a big yard where we'll play football. I like that song, right? But it's a kind of imagining that's very, very, you know, American, for instance. And maybe if we over imagine it that way, we'll forget some of the bigger glories. I know, I think I know, this is not my area, but in church history, there was, I think, a debate about whether our resurrected bodies would be sexed, male and female. Is that correct? And do you have any thoughts on that? That's great. Yeah.

I also find that really interesting. So the general tendency is that the Eastern Orthodox theological tradition has thought that gender and sex are something that would melt away in resurrection. And in the West, the Latin speaking West, so that's all of us Protestants, right? Augustine insists against that, that we'll be resurrected male and female. And that is a moment that really intrigued me when I first ran into it, because Augustine basically says this. He says, what God made, God will redeem. And sex slash gender, that's not his language, right? But it's ours. It's part of the goodness of God's creation. And it's not something to be wiped away. So, you know, Augustine gets blamed for being a real pessimist about sex and gender and for

being bad about women. And, you know, he has his moments. I mean, he's an ancient guy, but I think actually he's really being shaped here by the scriptural witness on the goodness of the body. So you have, here's a guy who, right, in his own judgment can't get married because he has too many problems with lust, and he just sees singleness as the only way for his life as a Christian. But when he's asked if there will be women in the resurrection, he specifically says the female part will still be there. And instead of being for the old uses, reproduction, right, we will gaze on them and be kindled to praise the creator right so this guy who has a giant problem with lust is like yeah in the resurrection we'll be

able to look at each other's bodies and say praise god um and i think that's right um i mean as a woman i want to say yeah this god made me god will redeem me um my, as a woman, I want to say, yeah, God made me. God will redeem me. My existence as a female human is not a mistake or a problem or something that you have to get rid of to imagine holy life together. It's part of the goodness of God. I'm curious why the Eastern fathers, why did they think that there wouldn't be sex bodies in the resurrection? Because it's, I mean, maybe it's because I'm Western or whatever, but it's like the Western view just seems like the most natural, easiest way to read scripture. Like, why would this be done away

with? This is part of creation pre-Genesis 3. What do they point to? Like, why would they say that? I have trouble being super friendly here. It just seems to me like a mistaken reading. So I think there are people who could try for a better reading. But I think the shared desire East and West is to imagine holy, happy, embodied life together. And I think the East, for whatever reason, can't see sex and gender as a part of that. East, for whatever reason, can't see sex and gender as a part of that. So in the East, there's a pretty strong tradition of looking at the garments of skin that God gives to Adam and Eve after the fall, right, for their protection, thinking of those not just as garments of skin, but as many, many aspects of our life under the condition of sin, which let us get through things here and now,

but which we won't need at the end of the day. And they tend to include sex and gender there as a garment of skin. I guess maybe the fairest thing I can say is it does give us a lot of trouble, doesn't it? Right. And so one possible solution is get rid of it. I just don't think it's the right solution. I guess it made me think of Origen castrated himself thinking that would solve the issue. But that's interesting. I guess you could, because there is certain readings that the original human was androgynous, right? You had that interpretation. I don't think that's the best reading,

but there is that interpretive tradition. So, you know, the Easter, maybe they're thinking to go all the way back to how humanity was originally created before they were separated, you know, I don't know. Before the separation, right? The supposed separation of Adam from Eve. I think that it probably plays in. And, you know, I mean,

when we look to creation, the original goodness of creation before the fall, the trick is the text is pretty short, right? It's important and it establishes some really important things. God made us, it's good. But it does invite a lot of reading in as well, I think. Augustine himself will actually give an account of what he thinks sex would have been like before the fall, which involves a lot of reading in, right? Now, it's different from the East, which would just say they don't think there would have been sex. But it is kind of a bizarre account. I know also within, as a while back, I went around and kind of looked at various fathers and kind of their view of marriage and sex and stuff.

And you do have one kind of tradition that, I can't remember the names now, but I'm wondering now if there are Eastern thinkers that sex within marriage should only be for procreation. In fact, I think if I can be explicit, if you enjoy it, even if you're trying to have a kid, you shouldn't even do that. Any kind of pleasure surrounding sex is seen as like any kind of passion, desire surrounding sex is just categorically evil. Is that an Easter? Maybe there's a couple of different thinkers. I think it's pretty widespread in the ancient church, East and West. Augustine, though I've been defending him right on the goodness of this stuff, thinks that even within marriage, sex is always sin. Not that you shouldn't do it because the sin is covered over by the sacrament of marriage, but he, he can't imagine a sinless, uh, version of that beyond his kind of strange account of Eden. Um, and so I think, you know, we are more, um, open to imagining that sex is good,

which I think is right. Uh, we should be, it is good. It's a gift of creation. But we're far less worried about all the ways it gets infected by sin, which I think those early fathers are really aware of. So I wouldn't want to go with them there, right? But I think we can learn from that. Don't forget, we make a mess of this and we hurt each other really badly and don't downplay how important that is. But yeah, the early church just really loves virginity. They think it's really the best way. That's so foreign to us as I'm thinking.

By the way, I gotta love my audience, I'm so impressed. You're just recalling stuff. I mean, I did not, I didn't get any questions ahead of time. So this is all just you thinking on the fly. I really appreciate it. You're right in my wheelhouse. I'm curious. I've always wondered this and you might, again, yeah.

I'm curious if you have any thoughts on this. It kind of is part of your expertise. Like, how did the fathers get, in my opinion, it sounds a little arrogant to say this, but how did they get so off the rails on some of this stuff so quickly? Not everything. I think they actually value singleness and virginity probably more than we do. And I think, you know, first Corinthians seven is pretty startling in what it says about singleness. And, and I think we're off the rails, frankly. Yeah, totally, totally. And I want to, yeah, I want to, I want to not assume that we're not off the rails, but

like with, with like any kind of everything we're saying, like, like, you know, sex, there's any kind of pleasure means it's sin um even the inferiority inferior inferiority of women like the misogyny and stuff like that i i don't see the new testament doing that like when did it change or you know like is it just that they're just such a product of their culture and they couldn't cut i think it think it's culture and context. And, you know, again, that's a warning for every age to be humbled about our sense that we've finally got it right, right? Because we too are in culture and context. And that's good because God loves cultures and contexts and works within them, but they also have their own characteristic distortions, right? So, you know, it's not just that the fathers hated women. There's

also a lot of freedoms and affirmations for women that come from the early church, right? And even the emphasis on singleness in some ways was a kind of new freedom for women. In the Roman Empire, singleness is not really a vocation for women. Your job is to marry and to have babies. Now, those are good things, right? But Christianity says they're not the only things. You could also devote your life full time to Jesus. And I think for a lot of women, that's a real freedom, especially from, say, a forced marriage to some guy 30 years your senior who isn't a Christian for it.

And I don't know that it's all kind of sex is bad. I think some of it is I can imagine a different life for myself in Jesus than the life that the state would have for me, which is to have babies for the state. state would have for me, which is to have babies for the state. Right. So again, not that there's not kind of a mess there, but, but it, that's not a context that makes any sense to us. The idea that one might renounce marriage as a kind of kingdom politics doesn't, doesn't make much sense in our world though. But I also think in every context and culture, you know, bad philosophy gets in. I love the Platonic tradition and lots of things about it, but it's not great about bodies.

And some of that is certainly getting into the thinking of some of the fathers. The trick always, right, is to evaluate our traditions according to scripture, notice what's good and beautiful there and what needs to be disciplined and maybe removed as well from those traditions. Yeah. I think, you know, with the fathers, I think there can be definitely an arrogance of thinking we modern Westerners, you know, we're judging them through our lens, you know, and they'd be judging us through their lens. And I thought, I just wonder if there's probably some blind spots we have that they fill in and maybe some blind spots they have that we fill in. But I love your point about culture can not can, it just does.

It just always is affecting our thinking in ways that we don't always see. The platonic thing, though. So, like, I wonder, and this is me just thinking out loud, like, you do have, you know, the New Testament, the New Testament writers are very, you know, very Jewish, interacting with Greek audience. But then, you know, throughout the first century and on into the second, you have a primarily Gentile church, you have kind of a bad blood between Jews and Gentiles, and that continues on even in the church. And do you think that might be part of it? Then in the second, third, fourth centuries, you have a lot more kind of Greek thinking, Greek philosophy, Greek thinking, Greek philosophy, Platonic thinking that is dominating and at the expense maybe of, of maybe some more Jewish ways of thinking. I haven't really, I'm sure there's been stuff written on this. Yeah, that's definitely a narrative that's, that's out there. And I think

there's truth in it. Uh, when I get suspicious is when it becomes, oh, these fathers were, you know, bent by Platonism and we need to get to a pure theology that isn't so bent. I don't think there is a pure theology. I think we're supposed to be in the world, not of it, but in it. And we're embodied cultural social beings who don't, you know, live in some kind of sealed off environment where none of this stuff infects us. And again, I don't think that's bad, right? Philosophy's good. Intellectual traditions are good. But they have to be disciplined by scripture. So I think, yeah, probably.

But I wouldn't want to say it's unique to like Platonism messing up the fathers. I think we all are messed up by, and also probably enriched by the cultural waters in which we swim. And that's a good reason to read across difference is to learn from someone who in different waters. That's good. No, I love that. water. So that's good. No, I love that. So it's really hard to give your body all the nutrition that it needs. Even if you eat fairly healthy, like I do, you still should be taking some kind of nutritional supplement. That's why I started drinking AG1 almost a year and a half ago now. And I could truly notice the difference. I have more sustained energy throughout the day.

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most about taking AG1 every day is that I can truly feel, feel the difference. AG1 is the supplement I trust to provide the support my body needs daily. And that's why they've been a partner with Theology Neuron for so long. If you want to take ownership of your health, it starts with AG1. Try AG1 and get a free one-year supply of vitamin D3K2 and five free AG1 travel packs with your first purchase. If you just go to drinkag1.com forward slash T-I-T-R, that's drinkag1.com forward slash T-I-T-R. Check it out. Let's go to our modern cultural waters with regard to a theology of the body. What are some ways in which maybe Christians today are negatively affected by maybe bad ideas of the body. What are some ways in which maybe Christians today are negatively affected by maybe bad ideas about the body and how does this manifest itself, if that makes sense? Yeah, I think there's a lot of implicit dualism, a dualism which understands the world is divided

into material and spiritual and assumes that spiritual things are good and material things are bad. That's fundamentally unchristian because God made all the things, right? The material and the spiritual. And materiality is not in itself bad. It groans under the condition of sin, but so does spirituality, right? So I think we tend to think often as though everything bodily is itself a problem, instead of remembering that sin is the problem, while the body is good. And sometimes we act as though spiritual things are always good, while forgetting that sin can infect every aspect of life, including

the spiritual. So I think we live in this kind of dualistic split where the Christian faith calls us to a real holism, which says we're embodied souls, we're in soul bodies, that's good. Everything we do is both material and spiritual. And that's how God created us, right? To love God and to love each other. I also think our culture just is really ramping up, has been ramping up and continues to ramp up the project of asking individuals to sort of conquer and discipline their own bodies to shape them into basically, you know, beacons of sexual attractiveness as

defined by the media, right? So exercise, eat right, those should be good things, right? It should be good to look for the health of the body, but they've been warped into exercise in order to look like this so that people will find you attractive, right? Eat so little that you're not healthy or happy. Instead of eating for health, right? Again, it becomes eating for this kind of shape your body into a beacon of attractive gifts. And with that, we have a cult of youth. We have a cult of, of whiteness. We have a cult of, of richness, right? As those standards of physical attractiveness are not, they're not about the beauty of Jesus. They're about a certain kind of culturally packaged beauty.

I think that's huge. And it's really easy for Christians to say, Oh, exercise that's good. Right. Because we believe in health. And yes. And then it's also all tied up in this kind of system in which maybe we're not doing it for health or doing it in healthy ways or able to separate it from really unhealthy ideas about what the body is for. There's a lot of freedom in saying the body is for Jesus, not for attracting as many individuals as possible. There seems to be almost like a contradictory, like downplaying of the body, depending on what we're talking about. And then an elevate, an overly elevation of the body,

which you're getting at here, um, the, the, you know, trying to have your body match the Western standards of youthful beauty or whatever. Um, but then in other ways I hear people talk and it sounds almost like a neo-gnostic kind of view of the body.

Like the, the real you is the internal you. Um, yeah, yeah. So do you see that too? It's kind of a both and depending, like people aren't really consistent in how they think about the material and immaterial aspects of who they are. I think that's exactly right. We seem able to live with a lot of inconsistency there, right? And that downplaying of the body can be used then as an excuse for moral everything. So, just as we see in Corinthians, I think, right, where people are saying,

eat, drink, for tomorrow you die, right? Which is a way to say, like, the body doesn't really matter. We see that, I think, in terms of maybe sexual ethics. It's just my body. It's just a mammoth. What really matters is the real me that's inside me. And so do whatever you want in terms of sexual ethics. Yeah, we live with a lot of weird tensions, I think. We're on the spectrum of, if I can put it in terms of a spectrum, I did a little bit of research on theological anthropology for one of my books a few years ago, and I wrote a chapter on it, but this is not my area. So I was like, really? Mark Cortez, I lean on him a lot. He helped me out. But I had this spectrum of you have full full, strong, like dualism on one side. You have the immaterial you, the material you. These are basically separate. You have the soul, which is immaterial.

You have the body, which is material. And these are two different entities. All the way over to, is it monism? Where it's like, it is. We're just our body. There is no separation at all. And I thought, as I understood biblical theology of the body, that it's much closer toward monism. Now, some expressions of monism, I was like, I don't know if I'd go that far. But I was definitely, you know, 75% of the way in that direction or however I framed it.

First of all, is that even a helpful way? I don't know. Like, what are your thoughts on how I'm framing it? Right. And I think, um, there's a variety of ways of trying to articulate the middle, um, uh, which is where we want to be the middle on this, but there's two kind of sides, which are clearly problematic. And the one is the hierarchical dualism, which says, I'm really only my soul, and the body's a weight that's dragging me down, and it's a problem, right? And the other is a reductive monism, maybe, right? Which says, materiality is all that there is, there is no spiritual reality, there is no spiritual life or realm. So we need a both and,

right? We're both spiritual and physical at the same time. And I think the way we usually say that is we're body and soul. But even that feels a little too, I don't know. Like when people say that, I'm like, yeah, but this still has too much dualism. I think it's been used so,

so much for hierarchical dualism that maybe it's, it's become really hard language. But I've come back around to that language after being suspicious more of soul language, because I do think it's essential to name the reality of spiritual being, right? If you don't believe in souls, it's also, I think, hard to believe in angels and maybe even hard to believe in God, right? It's hard to believe the spiritual realm exists. So I don't care about saying I have a soul that's a thing, but I think that language of soul points to saying I'm a spiritual being as well as a physical being, right? Made for relationship with God,

who is spirit. And that that is a reality just as much as my flesh and my bones are also a reality. But yeah, maybe there are places where the soul language is going to just be heard so dualistically that it can't be helped. There's a philosopher, John Cooper, really great book called Body, Soul and Life Everlasting, in which he works through all this stuff. And he ends up advocating for something that I can't remember which way he puts it. It's either holistic dualism or dualistic holism. Maybe he's using both terms, right? Yes, there are two things, right? Body and soul. But the point is they form one whole. And I think that's an attractive way to put it. Well, the phrase you use in soul body and bodied souls to where you're just kind of like, rather than making a harsh distinction between the two, that's super helpful.

Who's the New Testament professor from Fuller who's written on this a lot? Joel Green. Yeah. from fuller who's written on this a lot uh joel green yeah yeah now he would be more on the monism side or closer i i felt i was pretty convinced by his stuff but i he's a convincing guy too he's in a camp that calls itself non-reductive physicalists um okay so if i said we have to reject reductive monism or reductive physicalism i'm'm great with Joel Green's non-reductive version. And by non-reductive, I think what he means is it's all bodily, but we are also spiritual at the same time.

That works for me. I'm maybe more drawn to the holistic dualism language. Cause I think it handles some aspects of death better. But both, I think, are live Christian possibilities for thinking. Have you done, okay, so this is going to get potentially controversial. So if you're like, I don't want to wander there, I'm totally fine with that. But have you done any reflection on the transgender conversation or transgender conversations around this issue? And do you have any thoughts? And if it's such a volatile thing, so if you're like, I don't want to publicly go there.

I can talk about it. And obviously, it's such an important question in our world, right? I think, though, the main thing I want to say about it right now is that I'm concerned that Christians are claiming to understand it all very quickly when there's a lot we don't know here, right? So I think there's a lot we don't understand biologically, psychologically, spiritually, culturally, that we probably would need to understand better in order to get it. But I do think there can be in that conversation, a kind of concerning sense that the body is not important or not real, right? In some way, the real me is the soul inside of me and the body is not. But it also

seems possible to me that under the condition of sin, there could be a kind of disconnect between body and soul, which is not what we're intended for, but which is something that happens. I tend to think a lot of it is wrapped around just the really bad ways we've thought about gender, the ways we've done maleness and femaleness in ways that hurt people. And so people are aware of that and looking for something less hurtful, more health. I don't know, maybe that's a lot of not saying anything, but I want to say absolutely that bodies matter. And I want to care about people's experiences of their bodies. And I want us to be careful before we claim to understand the whole thing. Honestly, Beth, that's one of the most advanced

to understand the whole thing. Honestly, Beth, that's one of the most advanced two minute summaries I've heard about that. That is so helpful. I mean, because I've been swimming in this world for a while and yes, if you go on, if you Google stuff, you go on social media, you go on TikTok, you're going to hear a lot of maybe perspectives on trans identities from trans people or younger trans identifying people that would, well, yes, it does sound kind of Gnostic, whatever, like I'm trapped in the wrong body, whatever. But there's, I just want people to know, like, first of all, just get offline for a second, go read a scholarly book. There are some more scientifically and philosophically more sophisticated understandings of this potential disconnect

between an immaterial aspect of somebody and a material aspect. And I've wrestled with those, and I don't still find them super compelling necessarily, but they're way more sophisticated than these kind of pundit Ben Shapiro pot Ben Shapiro pot shots at people. It just, it's like, come on, like, let's honor some of the more sophisticated versions of these things. So, like, I've used the illustration just to mess with people. I'll deconstruct their thinking. I don't always reconstruct it sometimes, but, you know, I'll say, okay, just imagine you're standing next to, let's just say a spouse. You're standing next to your spouse and somebody reached inside your heads, took your brains and just did this and just swapped them. So my brain goes inside my wife's brain, her brain goes inside my body. And I say,

which one are you? Did you go with your brain or did you stay with your body? And people were like, I don't know the answer to that, you know? So just to... One of the interesting things there is that it's not just our brains, right? It seems to also be like our guts and the neurons in our fingers that give pianists muscle memory. Right, so we think of it as the brain. Surely a lot of it is there, but it's more than that as well.

I don't know. Can you swap brains? Oh's that's yeah a really interesting question my whole point my only point in doing that illustration is to say the relationship between your body and your brain slash mind let's say is maybe more complicated than we make it out to be so just to walk around mocking people you can't be born in the wrong body you know know, like, okay, I get it. Yes. And some people make really philosophically naive claims about that, but let's at least acknowledge there's probably a lot more you don't know

about the body brain relationship than we do know. So let's be a little more patient maybe in how we interact with this stuff. So anyway, that's all. As a Christian theologian, I just want to say bodies matter. They're good and people matter and we need to care about them and love them. And let's keep working toward that sort of all together. That's a great word, Beth. Tell us, what are you currently thinking through or working on right now?

Are you, is this always, you know, theological anthropology, is this always in the back of your mind? Are you working on anything else right now? I think I'll always be talking about the body. But right now I'm writing a short little book called Why I'm Protestant, which I'm having a ton of fun with. I know a lot of dear Catholic converts and God bless them. But I myself am a convinced Protestant and it's fun to write about that. And then I'm also writing a book about conversion uh and how it relates to theology and in some ways that it too is about the body um

uh we're converted body and soul right um that's a longer term project uh getting out there now what are some of the questions you're asking with the conversion book what do you uh because that sounds like a basic christian thing that everybody probably understands but obviously you're writing a book on it. So there's probably a lot more than people realize here. You know, the short version is it seems like we're in a moment where a lot of Christians are unsure about and maybe even apologetic over ways we've thought about conversion in our churches and culturally. Right. thought about conversion in our churches and culturally, right? There's an awareness that those are sometimes related to manipulation or what have you. So my question is really,

can we name that there's been problems with the way we've thought about this without letting go of the reality of and the need for conversion and transformation, right? How do we speak that story in a new time and place? And maybe part of the problem is we've been trying to use an 18th century narrative, right? The narrative of the camp meeting. When we need a 21st, 21st, is that our century? The 21st century version of the narrative, the need to be changed by God remains the same.

But maybe we need new ways to sort it out. And that's a long term, longer term project. It is. We'll see how long it takes. Yeah. Now, OK, so the Protestant one's interesting. I mean, I'm a fellow Protestant. So this, yeah, I don't, this is not my area at all.

But I've met, yeah, I don't, this is not my area at all, but, uh, I've met, yeah, same thing. A lot of like, yeah, I grew up in an environment where, you know, Catholics aren't even Christians or whatever. And now I'm like, yeah, plenty who, who are, there's some kind of Catholic countries that you go into. I'm like, man, is it, where's the gospel, you know, but, um, definitely no many, several, at least Catholics that are sold out believers in Jesus. But so what would be, yeah, some main distinctions for you? Is it the classic authority of the Pope? Is it scripture tradition? Is it Mary?

Or what's the, what are the big things, big reasons why you are not a Catholic? If I'm going to boil it down all the way to something too simple, if I have to choose between trusting scripture or the church, I'm going with scripture. That's really what it comes down to. And of course, that's complicated, right? Scripture is not always easy to read. But I think we need the word of God from outside of us. And especially in this day and age where we're so aware of the brokenness of the church. I think Protestantism might offer us a way to live with that brokenness without losing hope in the God who wants something better for us. Some versions of this kind of thing, a why I'm Protestant book, have been very anti-Catholic,

say. And this is going to be a short series with the diversity press, which tries to be more peaceful and loving. I'm Protestant because Catholics are horrible, but I'm Protestant and I acknowledge my Christian brothers and sisters who are Catholic. Now, wouldn't Catholics say, well, yes, okay, scripture is authoritative, but you can't, nobody can read scripture apart from tradition. Like we come at scripture as Trinitarians. Well, where did we get that from? You know, we can't even, it's impossible to read scripture apart from tradition. So, it really is a both and. How would you, if I'm representing how they would respond well? Yeah, I mean, I think that's right to some extent, but which tradition? And I'm not persuaded that a tradition headed by the Pope

is reliable. There's a lot of mess in church history, both Catholic and Protestant, and I can't deny the existence of that mess. But say, you know, the Trinity, where did we get it from? I mean, I really do think we got it from Scripture. Is it explicit in Scripture in exactly the way that theologians talk about it? No. But I do think it's our best effort at summing up the story of the God we meet in Scripture. And that's the one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So there are different ways to narrate that. But I think Scripture pressed us to that and continues to press us. I've often thought, because I remember years ago when somebody threw that back on me, you know, like, you know, these Scripture-only people, well, that's just naive. Like, you can't separate Scripture from tradition.

And as I thought about it, I'm like, oh, that's just naive. Like you can't separate scripture from tradition. And as I thought about it, I'm like, oh, that's a good, but then when I go back and read early church fathers, you know, great thinkers throughout the history of the church, I think they would say scripture is primary and ultimately authoritative. I mean, look at like origin or something. They just bleed, bleed, bleed scripture. Like they are just, everything they say is because they're studying the text, you know, would that be correct? I mean. And the fathers wouldn't put that in sort of contemporary evangelical terms, but I do think it's the basic assumption that this text is the word of God and it's different from any kind of other authority that we have. And, you know, we say scripture alone and that's right, but that's kind of a rhetorical move. We don't really mean scripture completely without tradition and

rationality and community. What we mean is that scripture has to, we have to come back to it again and again as the primary authority and as the authority through which we try to view those other things. I wouldn't want to try to read scripture without tradition, but nonetheless, I think that tradition always has to be disciplined by scripture. It's not scripture only or scripture alone. It's scripture is the ultimate authority, right? Yeah. The Bible alone, because there is, I would say, a more conservative, naive understanding of sola scriptura that dismisses or doesn't realize they're swimming in cultural waters and traditional waters. You catch Martin Luther talking like that, right? The philosophers are evil demon dogs who we should never pay attention to.

But then a second later, he's using philosophy. And again, I think that's fine. Hopefully, philosophy will help us understand scripture, but more importantly, scripture will help us understand philosophy. These are all just random questions. I hope this is okay. Yeah, sure. It's fun. Okay, so top two favorite ancient writers and then top two or three contemporary writers that you enjoy.

Okay, I'm going to go one ancient and one medieval. Augustine. Love him. Just love him. You can also call him Augustine, by the way. I've been calling him Augustine, but both are right. Wait, is that the consent? There is no correct?

That is not it. Okay. It seems to me among academic theologians to partly depend on which school you went to so um there's a tradition right anyway i love him augustine augustine uh and then from the middle ages i really love julian of norwick um she wrote the first book of theology by a woman in the english language. And I find more and more in her all the time. Contemporary. Ooh, only two.

You can do more. Yeah. I love Sarah Coakley, Janet Soskis, Catherine Tanner, Catherine Sonneriger, Willie Jennings. There's some really cool people doing systematic theology right now. I tried to read Tanner. She's harder than O'Donovan. Trick is to read small bits. I had a teacher tell me that about BART, right? Like a paragraph is going to be perfectly understandable. Just stop after a paragraph for a bit and then come back. Tell us about your, where people can find your work

and tell us about your, the institution you the institution you're a part of now. Yeah. So a hub to find my work is my Substack, which you can get to with bethfelkerjones.substack.com or by Googling my name, it should pop up. There you can find links to my books and other writings, but I write regularly there for the public. I'd love to have you subscribe. And then I'm teaching at Northern Seminary near Chicago. It's a really exciting place to be. Northern is a little bit unique, I think, in being a really clearly evangelical seminary. Classic Christianity, the authority of scripture is kind of what I mean by that. While also being really clear about support for women in ministry and seeking justice for all

people. We're working, have a good tradition of and are working to continue to build ties with black churches and multiracial churches. And our students are amazing. I love them so much. So my students are my hope for the church. If I start to get discouraged, I get together with my students on the Zoom and they give me hope. So if you're thinking about seminary classes, check us out at Northern. We'd love to have you come take a look. You can take our classes from anywhere online. And it's an exciting place for me to be. I can verify from a distance, Northern, you guys are stacked with awesome professors and are doing great things. And yeah, lots of great distant programs and stuff that are accessible.

So thanks so much, Beth, for being on Theology in a Row. Thanks for having me. this show is part of the converge podcast network