The Soul and Gender

In his journal article, Four Theses Concerning Human Embodiment, Gregg R. Allison quotes Justin E.H. Smith’s definition of embodiment as “having, being in, or being associated with a body.”[1] In other words, he is talking about a soul that has, or is in, or is associated with a body. He believes that human nature consists of a material element and an immaterial element. He is a holistic dualist, that is, someone who believes that the soul and body can be distinguished and that the soul can exist after the body’s death, but that in the body’s life they are completely interconnected and function as one. And he believes that this is the Biblical perspective as well.[2] I agree.

Allison asserts that “embodiment is the proper state of human existence”[3] and says we can

rightly affirm, “I am my body” (please note the first presupposition, according to which I do not affirm “I am only my body”). This thesis contradicts the popular contention, “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.” On the contrary, “I am my body.”

He affirms that “God personally creates each and every individual…is intimately engaged in each and every aspect, the minute and large details, of embodied creation, which include the following: (1) a mental component…(2) an emotional component…(3) a volitional component…(4) a moral component…(5) a physical component.”[4] He also affirms

that a fundamental given of human existence is maleness or femaleness. Indeed, human sex/gender maps almost completely onto (correlates with) human embodiment. (The lone exception to this point is the genetic [mis]condition of intersex, which affects a certain percentage of human beings—statistics range from .04% to 1.7%—and will not be part of our discussion.)[5]

He states that “God’s design for his image bearers is that they are gendered/sexed human beings” and finds support for this in Genesis 1:27, which, he says, “underscores the divine deliberation concerning, and the divine actualization of, image bearers who are either male or female.”[6]

But Genesis 1:27 does not actually underscore that (do you see it underscored in the text?). And Allison’s negation of the lone exception of “the genetic (mis)condition of intersex” actually serves to contradict what he thinks is underscored. These individuals are not clearly either male or female, as we have seen, yet God was, as Allison and Scripture (Psalm 139:13-16) says, intimately involved in every detail of their embodied creation.[7] It does not matter that the number of intersex people is relatively small. They are human people made in God’s image, intimately embodied by Him.

What then, is the gender of their souls? Is it not a mixture of gender even as their bodies are? We must do a little philosophy.

[1] Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, Volume 23:2 (Summer 2019), p. 157.

[2] Allison cites John W. Cooper, who makes a brilliantly capable defense of holistic dualism as the Biblical perspective in his Body, Soul and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate, William B. Eerdmans, 1989.

[3] Four Theses Concerning Human Embodiment, SBJT 23:2 (Summer 2019), p. 160.

[4] Ibid., p. 162

[5] Ibid., p. 163

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid., pp. 166,167. “God specifically designs and creates each human being to be a particular gendered embodied individual.” He apparently does not, as witnessed by the DSD’s we have examined previously.