This week the blog is sponsored by Baker Books and is adapted from Gregg R. Allison’s new book Embodied: Living as Whole People in a Fractured World.
“I am my body.” Do you agree or disagree with this statement? I’m not asking about your assessment of the statement “I am only my body.” That can’t be true—so you’d better not agree!—because we exist as disembodied people in heaven between our death and resurrection. But my focus is on our earthly embodiment, so I frame the statement to highlight being embodied.
Put differently as a question: “Am I who I am principally in virtue of the fact that I have the body I have?” (Justin E. H. Smith, Embodiment: A History). I respond positively. What about you? Put as another statement: “Without this body I do not exist, and I am myself as my body” (the Russian philosopher Vladimir Iljine). I agree. What about you?
This position contradicts the popular contention set forth by George MacDonald that “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body” (Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood). This view seems to reflect the influence of Gnostic thought, which privileges the
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