Adams on the Body
In February, 1992, Jay Adams gave a lecture on The Biblical Perspective on the Mind-Body Problem. That lecture was later published in a two-part series by The Journal of Biblical Ethics in Medicine. You can read Part One here. You can read Part Two here.
Adams delved into several interesting issues that are extremely relevant now over thirty years later.
Area #1: Avoiding Gnostic Thinking about the Body
Adams described in detail the Bible’s portrayal of the sacredness and goodness of the body. He spoke against Gnostic thinking—with its negative view of the body—creeping into the nouthetic counseling world. Adams spoke about the unity of the body/soul—what I’ve called “the embodied-soul.”
“The union of ‘mind’ or spirit with the body forms a functioning unit oriented toward the material world” (Part One, 22).
“This union of body and spirit, rather than called ‘dichotomy,’ as some people call it (meaning ‘to cut into two’), I would rather call ‘duplexity,’(which means two things folded together, two things brought together). Dichotomy speaks of taking the two apart, and we might call that what happens at death (you are dichotomized), but what you are now is a duplex person” (Part One,
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