4 Reasons We Need a Biblical View of Humanity
By Rod Dreher
Rawlings School of Divinity
CLED 720: Biblical & Theological Foundations of Education
Genevieve Hamer
July 3, 2022
Human Nature and the Gospel
When we consider the view of personhood presented in Scripture, the question of whether
we are mere brain machines or something more becomes a gospel question. In other words,
the integrity of the gospel proclamation is undermined if we reject a biblical view of humanity,
because, in large part, it is our nature that frames the gospel message in the first place. There
are many reasons these connections matter, but four significant ones are worth reflecting on
briefly.
First of all, the gospel of Jesus Christ presents us with a call: because we have all fallen into
sin, we are unable to live the righteous life that God requires. This is a universal problem
endemic to humanity. The remedy provided by God in Christ is the forgiveness of sins, secured
by Jesus’s sacrifice of himself on the cross—the righteous for the unrighteous. We can stand in
his forgiveness and be acceptable to God by turning from sin and following Jesus in faith. This is
a very cursory description of the good news proclaimed by the apostles and bequeathed to the
church, but it has a key implication that traditional Christian anthropology has embraced and
many secular thinkers have abandoned: there is a moral law. We cannot be in need of
forgiveness unless we have transgressed the moral law; and if we are not in need of
forgiveness, the gospel is emptied of its power and truth. No moral law, no sin problem; no sin
problem, no gospel.
Second, the Bible makes it clear that the death of our bodies is not the end of our story.
While the belief in life after death is by no means unique to Christianity, being found
everywhere from Plato to Buddha to Shirley MacLaine, it is essential to the Christian message.
Over and over again, Jesus and the apostles preached that after this life we would be raised to
face judgment, and judgment would be followed by either eternal life or death. So central was
this belief in life after death that the apostle Paul declared, “If our hope in Christ is only for this
life, we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world” (1 Cor. 15:19 NLT). Surviving the death
of our bodies is a central biblical teaching, but one rejected by nearly all secular cognitive
scientists, their advocates, and the we-are-just-brains metaphysic.
Third, the reliability of Jesus and the Scriptures is at stake. According to the Bible, there is
no salvation outside of Jesus Christ, and putting our trust in him is the only way to find
redemption. However, if Jesus taught and preached a demonstrably false view of human
nature, then his authority to prescribe a remedy for what is wrong with that nature would be
hopelessly undermined. If Jesus claims to be the divine made human and to teach the very
words of God himself, then his trustworthiness would evaporate if we were to discover his
entire view of human nature to be radically wrong. He would be offering a cure for an
imaginary disease and would lose all credibility.
Jesus Was Embodied
The fourth consideration is about the nature of Jesus Christ himself. The early creeds
struggled to refute heresies and articulate the complex Christology implied by Scripture. They
culminated in a sophisticated affirmation in AD 451 as a result of the fourth ecumenical council,
convened in Chalcedon (in modern-day Turkey). In a statement known as the Chalcedonian
Definition (or Creed), the council agreed to the following:
Therefore, following the holy fathers, we all with one accord teach men to acknowledge
one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, at once complete in Godhead and complete in
manhood, truly God and truly man, consisting also of a reasonable soul and body; of one
substance with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with
us as regards his manhood; like us in all respects, apart from sin; as regards his Godhead,
begotten of the Father before the ages, but yet as regards his manhood begotten, for us men
and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin, the God-bearer; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord,
Only-begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division,
without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather
the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and
subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-
begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ; even as the prophets from earliest times spoke of
him, and our Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the creed of the fathers has handed down
to us.
Some key phrases in the definition help to show the importance of believing that humans
are not just brains or even just bodies but a union of body and soul. The argument of the
definition requires, first of all, that Jesus took on our nature and, second, that our nature is
dualistic (yet without division).
In addition to what it says about human nature in general, the definition raises a special
issue for orthodox Christology, because there must be some sense in which the incarnate Son
of God—that is, Jesus of Nazareth—has continuity and identity with the Son of God as he
existed in unity of substance with the Father and Holy Spirit before the incarnation. The
expression “the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form
one person” affirms that the Son took on a body: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among
us,” as Saint John put it in his Gospel (John 1:14). Another way to state it is this: If we are
merely physical objects, then Jesus was also merely a physical object. But a merely physical
object cannot have continuity and identity with a spiritual Being, as God is said to be.1
Therefore, if we are merely physical objects, then Jesus could not be God incarnate. And if we
are merely physical objects, then centuries of ecumenical, orthodox Christology based directly
on Scripture are wrong. We base our view of human nature—our anthropology—on our
doctrine of Christ because he is the perfect representative of humanity. As one theologian says,
there is
what may be described as a widespread consensus among theologians that Jesus Christ lies
at the heart of theological anthropology. . . . He alone provides the proper vantage point for
understanding humanity. . . . We can still maintain the long-standing intuition that Christology
alone provides the proper ground for theological anthropology.”2
Notes:
1. For example, John 4:24 says, “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in
spirit and truth.”
2. Marc Cortez, “The Madness in Our Method: Christology as the Necessary Starting Point
for Theological Anthropology,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Theological
Anthropology, ed. Joshua R. Farris and Charles Taliaferro (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), 15
