Why Christians Believe The Body Matters: Westminster Confession of Faith Chapter 4 (Part 2)

Your view of the human body is never “just theology.” It quietly shapes how you treat sex, work, suffering, dignity, and even what you think salvation is. We pick up in Westminster Confession of Faith Chapter 4 on creation and move from the physical side of humanity to the confession’s striking phrase: “reasonable and immortal souls.” 

We talk through classic Christian anthropology and why the historic Reformed approach speaks of a unified human person with body and soul, not a prison-body you need to escape. Along the way, we contrast Christian teaching with Greek and gnostic-style dualism that treats matter as inherently evil, and we press into the biblical hope that redemption includes the resurrection of the body and the promise of a new heaven and a new earth. That hope is not abstract. It is why Paul can say the body is a temple of the Holy Spirit and why embodied sins, including sexual immorality, matter in a unique way. 

From there we explore what it means to be created “reasonable”: why Christians can value the scientific method, why careful biblical interpretation and hermeneutics matter, and how sin warps the mind as well as the heart. We also dig into the image of God, the cultural mandate, and why human dignity is grounded in God’s design rather than our usefulness or intelligence. Finally, we close with a bracing vision of glorification drawn from classic catechetical theology: a coming state where we will freely choose only the good, obey God fully, and abhor sin forever. 

If this helped you love God’s Word and think more clearly about the Westminster Confession of Faith, subscribe, share the show with a friend, and leave a review.

Transcript

Welcome And Confession Roadmap

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Welcome back to Catechizing Conversations. My name is Sisko Victor, and this is a podcast. Diving into the confessions of the faith. We love the confessions of the faith. We particularly love the Westminster Confession of the Faith. Believe it's important. We love the Scripture more, but we believe that the Westminster Confession and these various Reformed Confessions help us to understand the Scripture, give us some boundaries of what Scripture is teaching, what should be in the church, what should not be in the church. And so we are working through the Westminster Confession of Faith. And we are on chapter four. I'm here with my friend Drew Brackbill. Welcome, Drew. Thank you, Cisco. And uh we're back at it, and we're picking up from where we left off last time, which is chapter four of creation, that it pleased God, the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, to create and to make out of nothing the world, all things, visible and invisible, in the space of six days. And then we spent sufficient time talking about what it meant that God made all creatures and he created man, male and female. We talked uh some about the body,

Moving From Body To Soul

SPEAKER_01 1:45

what it means to be physical, to be embodied, male and female. And now today we're going to the other half of that equation, the soul. For the confession says, male and female with reasonable and immortal souls.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

So what are we acknowledging when we affirm that? Yeah, endued with knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness after his own image, right? So so I guess we we we covered the body, now we have to talk about the soul. And I think I had thought about getting into this debate that has arisen. I think it's actually older, but it's you're seeing people kind of stumbling on this again now. This idea about whether the the human person is essentially dichotomous or trichotomous, right? Being like dichotomous being like composed of two big parts and trichotomous would be three.

Body And Soul Not Three Parts

SPEAKER_00 2:40

So like the trichotomy argument is that we are, I think it's like body, soul, and spirit. Yes. And then the dichotomy view, which is the orthodox Western view for like the last 1500 years, is that it's body and soul. So, but yeah, I mean, I I decided against ultimately like ranting about that for 45 minutes, and just I would say suffice it to say, in the Western Christian tradition, the orthodox position is that humans have a dual nature, right? Body and soul, and this is this is the dichotomy view which we've all held to since Athanasius. So and if if the body is the material substance of human beings, the part of us that's made of stuff, then the soul is the immaterial substance of human beings, the part of us that's not made of stuff. So one of the distinctions between Christian, I mean, pr pretty much everybody in the ancient world, even up till today, I think, dis agrees that there is there is a such a thing as a except for like the most hardbitten materialists that don't think there's such a thing as a soul. But most everybody feels that they have a soul or some inner inner essence that's you know distinct from their physical body. And one of the distinctions between Christian thought and the Greeks, or Gnostic thinking, or even like Zoroastrianism sort of also has this belief about the this flesh-spirit duality, is that Christians have never believed that flesh or matter or stuff is innately evil. And the Greeks and the Manichaeans did like they did believe that that the spirit was eternal and it was good, and then the body was temporal and it was bad and yucky. And we we talked about this some a

Matter Is Good Not Evil

SPEAKER_00 4:35

little bit last time. But what we believe, by contrast, is that both the spirit and the body are flawed or tainted by original sin. We would say, even we we Calvinists would go so far as to say totally depraved, right? But you know, that doesn't mean necessarily that every person is as bad as they could be or that human beings are innately evil, but it what total depravity means when we say it is just that you can't do anything good of your own willpower. But so we would say, you know, yeah, the spirit and the body are both flawed and tainted by original sin, but they're not innately evil because after all, God created the world and Adam good.

SPEAKER_01 5:19

So is that why you in, you know, you see some of the paintings after the Reformation, as not as many paintings with the halos you see paintings of farmers and women cooking in the kitchen. And it's because there was, I mean, that was the result of the theology. And the theology was you can do all things to the glory of God, and that this physical matter is not inherently evil.

SPEAKER_00 5:43

Do we have time to get into the art history of that? Like something about Brugel and the Yeah. I think you're probably right, though, that the the Reformation did it's it at least it certainly wrought a change in the topic, the the topics that things were painting, or topics the things that people were painting pictures of, gosh. Like it prior to the Reformation, it was most fine art was religious art. And then after the Reformation, certainly in the North, in the Northern Renaissance, there was a lot of uh paintings of just like yeah, Monday Monday.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

Give cows to the glory of God and bake bread to the glory of God, and yeah, had something to do, I think, with how the change happened theologically through the Reformation and not seeing the body as inherently.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

And you know, I'm thinking, like, did the Italian masters like they didn't really paint mundane stuff. They tended to like paint if it wasn't a picture of Mary, it was probably a picture of like something from Greek tragedy. Like they didn't they weren't yeah, the ones painting like scenes of mundanity were mostly from like Holland and and Germany, which were you know very Protestant strongholds. That's interesting. No, no, I actually I think you might be onto something.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

Uh so yeah, help us again to think through just the vast implications of the difference of how Christians think about the body and soul as opposed to say the Greeks. For the Greek, what was death?

SPEAKER_00 7:25

I'm sorry, I'm trying to think of a single Da Vinci painting that's a good thing. He painted He painted portraits of people and like but no nobles and stuff. Yeah. Anyway, I'm sorry. What was the question?

SPEAKER_01 7:39

For the Greek

Death As Release Versus Hope

SPEAKER_01 7:40

Death was what?

SPEAKER_00 7:41

Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, so so the Greeks thought that death was was like release for this for the for the spirit, because they thought that the body was a prison. So and uh Plato, we talked about Plato last time. Plato also thought you would ultimately be reincarnated, but that you would have to go through like several cycles of death and rebirth. And so they thought that death was like um a way of moving into the next crucible, and each successive life was refining your spirit more. At least Plato thought that. I mean, like whether Plato is typical of every Greek I mean, Plato had his own sort of strange ideology that was not necessarily in step with Greek public religion at the time, because he was he was a student of Socrates and like they killed Socrates for what he said about the gods. So, you know, but Platonism became very influential in the the like late Greek thinking.

SPEAKER_01 8:39

So death was a release for the spirit from the prison of the body, but for the Christian, the redemption that we have and the resurrection we hope for is of the body, it's not from the body, a very important thing.

SPEAKER_00 8:51

Yes, we are not being saved from our bodies. We are we are our bodies are being saved, right? We we our bodies will be resurrected. We're not going to be resurrected without bodies, which is something like we talked about last time. Like people think heaven is gonna be them floating around in this you know spiritual world where there's no physical reality, there's no physical form. Like, no, there's gonna be a new heaven and a new earth. So but this is also why we would say we consider certain sins to be sins against the body, like you're sinning against yourself, and particularly sexual immorality. Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians 6, 18. He says the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. You know, do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price, so glorify God in your body, right? So our bodies are not just a shell from which our souls are one day gonna fly free. Or like the Christian science people

Resurrection Saves The Body

SPEAKER_00 9:55

would would say, like, oh, the body is an illusion, which you know, and death and illness are the result of your your spiritual sin manifesting in your illusory physical body. Like, no, you know, our temple, our bodies are temples.

SPEAKER_01 10:08

And again, these things have great consequences. So among the Corinthians, I think Paul quotes them and says, you know, the the the stomach is for food and food for the stomach, and then he starts to talking about how a Christian is to live sexually. But the the the thinking among the Corinthians was, well, if you're hungry, you eat, and if you have a sexual appetite, you fulfill it. Yeah. And Paul's telling these new believers in Christ, no. As you said, quoted there from 1 Corinthians 6, you're not your own. So if you have a view of the body that it just doesn't matter and it's just this piece of meat, then I I imagine that one of the implications or consequences of that is you can just do whatever you want with it.

SPEAKER_00 10:50

And you can mistreat yourself in many ways, too. But you know, i if our body is really a temple in which the Holy Ghost is dwelling, you think about the respect with which the the Jews treated the temple, you know, and and the the way that they treated the those like the temple the vessels in the temple with great respect. I think our equally our bodies as a as a temple of the Holy of the Holy Spirit.

SPEAKER_01 11:19

That's a that's a really good point. And then the flip side of that, when we speak of the body and sexuality, is Christianity doesn't have this prudish view of sex either, as if it's inherently dirty and evil. No, has a very positive view, but within the confines of God's uh parameters.

SPEAKER_00 11:38

Yeah, and I mean this solemnly not to get into the perpetual virginity, but like one of the probably the best argument for the perpetual virginity of Mary that I've heard is that you know, she was like if Joseph was a devout Jew, and

Your Body As The Spirit’s Temple

SPEAKER_00 11:55

because God was within Mary, you know, he was present in her, then she would have been an archetype, sort of like the the Ark of the Covenant, and Joseph as a devout Jew would not have defiled her ever, right? Even once Jesus was had left her. You know, that's complicated by the fact that the Bible kind of does say that Joseph laid with Mary. Like I'm there's Catholicism. And then Mary and uh Jesus' brothers were looking for. Yeah, I mean they have an explanation for that too, but like in Matthew, it says that that Joseph did not know her until after the child was born. And of course, there's an argument that that doesn't really mean what it says. But you know, this is another sort of argument that's given for I think the best argument that's given for the perpetual virginity is like, yeah, Joseph was a religiously observant Jew, and he he wouldn't have wanted to touch Mary because the presence of the Lord had been on her and within her. So I mean, you know, Calvin thought it didn't matter, and so do I. So but I think so similarly, if our bodies are temples, that's the the we should treat ourselves with respect.

SPEAKER_01 13:04

Um treat ourselves with respect and our neighbors with such respect. Love your neighbors as yourself.

SPEAKER_00 13:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:12

Yeah. So our bodies are not merely a shell from which our souls will one day fly away and fly free. Our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, and they should be treated as such. So, what does it mean

Reason As A Created Gift

SPEAKER_01 13:25

that God made man reasonable? You see the wording here again, going back to the confession, a reasonable soul. Yeah. Reasonable and immortal souls.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

So so the divines divide up their treatment of like the pre- and post-fall state of man into two chapters. And so we're gonna talk about the fall in chapter six, and we'll probably talk then about like the impact of the fall on our our reason. But we know that man was created with the capacity to know truth and to use God-given reason to discern the reality of the world, which which God has created. So, like, this is one reason why we believe that, for example, the scientific method works, right? We can study reality and what God has revealed to himself from the the world around us and draw conclusions that are accurate. Of course, and I think it was Luther that that suggested this initially, that like sin warps our reason, right? It's not just that you know sin warps our our hearts, it also warps our minds, it warps our our rational mind as well. So our reason is not perfect post-fall, but nevertheless, God created us with this with this capacity.

SPEAKER_01 14:46

Yeah, so we don't have to sit and meditate or or do chants to try to call upon the Holy Spirit to get answers that God has given us a mind and He's given us His Word. Yeah, true. And and then also I guess that would be an argument not only for scientific method, but for exegetical hermeneutics of the scripture, that we look at the scripture, we look at the the genre, we we look at the audience, we look, we look at the the author, and and so forth, and we're able to extract truth based upon our applying our minds to the text.

SPEAKER_00 15:19

Yeah, one of the reasons why we believe in the perspicuity of scripture, right? To go back to what was that like six episodes ago? Chapter one. Six episodes in several months, yeah. Yeah. That that God has made man uh a being capable of reason.

unknown 15:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:34

So

Reading Scripture With Care

SPEAKER_01 15:35

what does it mean that God made man after his own image? Wow, this is a big one, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 15:39

Yeah, and uh so there are lots of different theories about this, about what the Imago Dei really is. Like I've heard one, I think one of the popular ones is that like, and this was popular historically too, that the being made in the image of God means that we're intelligent. And I don't think that's quite it, right? Like I think it I think one of the things that's implied by the Imago Dei is that we're made for community, right? Just like God Himself exists in community within the loving community, the Father, Son, and Spirit, the the Trinitarian con community, he's experiencing eternal and and perfect love. Mankind, in bearing God's image, we're designed for relationships of community and love. So man is not a is not a an animal for whom it is good to be alone, right? We talked about that last time too, that that it's it was not good for man to be alone.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

So there's a sense there that's just another theory, but there's a sense man is a representative of God.

Image Of God And Community

SPEAKER_00 16:45

Yes. Or the vice-regency theory, right? That we're made for dominion over the other creatures. So I think the historical theologians would have said that this is this what they would have called this being vice regents of God. So our task, and this is the task that's given to Adam in the garden, is to serve sort of like the wardens of creation by exercising the authority of another, namely God, who is the creator. So I think that's that's probably part of part of the the the Imago Dei. I think the the dominion that we're given arises out of more than merely intellectual superiority to other animals. Like, not to get too deeply down this rabbit hole, but like we used to think that humans were the only intelligent species on the planet. I'm putting intelligent in square scare quotes here. And the more that people research animal intelligence, I think the more we realize that like our intellectual superiority is probably a matter of degree rather than like a categorical difference. Like crows, for example, are pretty smart. Crows might even have language. Like if it was just that we're smarter than the crows, and that's what what the image of God is, like we're very smart, we have language. That means we're made in the image of God. Well, crows might be made in the image of God, too. You know, like we don't so so I think that that's that's not sufficient, right? I think that one of the the reasons why we are made in God's image is that we have a role as God's servants in ruling the earth, and that role arises out of more than just smartness, right? It arises out of more than just tool use, it arises out of more than just language. It's it is a providential decree by God. The creation and and the creation ordinance, right, the cultural mandate that he gives us is to be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it, rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, and over every living creature that moves on the ground. And man has risen to such utter dominion over the earth, because that's God's decree, that we should rule over every living creature.

SPEAKER_01 18:54

Yeah, and then also this then speaks to the sixth commandment and why we're not to murder, why we are to look out for the well-being of our our family, ourselves, our neighbors, etc., is that image

Dominion The Cultural Mandate

SPEAKER_01 19:10

of God doctrine that we are to treat people accordingly. Yeah, I was thinking about the uh the scarecrow, you know. My golden retriever has tremendous emotional intelligence, but I just don't know how smart she is.

SPEAKER_00 19:25

Yeah, I mean, you know, is your golden retriever cap capable of passing on knowledge between discrete generations? Because like crows can do that, by the way. Like a crow can teach its baby crows to be afraid of specific specific people.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

This is stuff my son Zion kind of you and Zion have been talking.

SPEAKER_00 19:42

I I might have told him about this. I think you did. Either that or he he he and I have watched the same YouTube videos. No, but like it is kind of insane the more you realize how how smart some animals are. Like I not again, maybe this is crazy, but like it says in the Bible we're supposed to rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky. And like the two other smartest creatures are dolphins and crows. You know, is that is that on purpose that God gave us that mandate? Like, watch out for those dolphins.

SPEAKER_01 20:13

You know, don't give them don't don't give them machine guns or you're in trouble. I don't know. So God has made us for something, and that first of all is communion with and worship of himself. And he's also created us with with his law written in in our hearts. So that's part of the image of God.

SPEAKER_00 20:36

Yes, with the law of God written in their hearts and the power to fulfill it, and yet under a possibility of transgressing, being left to the liberty of their own will, which was subject unto change. So, you know, I I think we've talked about this before too, but God made Adam good. He did not make Adam perfect

Law Written On The Heart

SPEAKER_00 20:55

in the sense that he was incapable of ever doing wrong. God created Adam with the capability of doing either good or evil, with freedom of choice. And so then finally the confession says, beside this law written in their hearts, they received a command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which while they kept they were happy in their communion with God and had dominion over the creatures. So, in contrast to modern human beings, right, and human beings since the fall period, Adam and Eve were not under the curse of sin. They were not totally depraved, but they were rather capable of freely choosing good, and and man was created with free will, which included the freedom to follow God's will and recognize the perfection of God's will. But as long as Adam and Eve were aligned with God's will while they kept his command, they were happy in their state of communion with God. And I think this tells us something about what we can expect in the life of glory to come. And Zacharias or Sinus. Had this really he has this really excellent treatment of this of this concept

Four States Of The Human Will

SPEAKER_00 22:05

in his commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism, he talks about like there being four four states of man or like four degrees of of human will. There's like the state of nature as one, then there's like the fallen state, the uh regenerate state, and then the perfected state. I think I got those right. But he he says that the that final state, the fourth degree of free power of choice, will belong to man after this life in a state of glorification or as perfectly regenerated, and in this state, the will of man will be free to choose only the good and not the evil. This will be the highest degree or the perfect liberty of the human will, when we shall obey God fully and forever. And in this state we shall not only not sin, but we will abhor it above everything else. Yea, we shall then no longer be able to sin. In proof of this, we may adduce the following reasons. Am I going to read this whole thing? Yes, I am. First, the perfect knowledge of God will then shine in the mind, whilst there will be the strongest and most ardent desire of the will and heart to obey God, right? So our desire, our our perfected desire, will be only to obey God. And that's distinct from Adam and Eve's desire in the state of innocence, right? Like they they did not possess only the desire to obey God, because they were capable of desiring something else, right? Eve was tempted, and Adam willingly chose to disregard God's command. So, you know, but Ursina says in the perfected state, there will be no room left for ignorance or doubt, or the least contempt of God. And then secondly, the saints in the life to come will never be forsaken, but will be constantly and forever ruled by the Holy Spirit, so that it will not be possible for them to deviate in the smallest respect from that which is right. And then he quotes in Matthew twenty-two, and I think in first John, there, as angels of God in heaven, and we shall be like him, the good angels are inclined only to that which is good, because they are good, just as the bad angels, on the other hand, are inclined only to that which is evil, because they are evil, but we shall be like the good angels. And lastly, he says, our condition will therefore be one of far greater excellence than that of Adam before the fall. Adam was indeed perfectly conformed to God, but he had the power to will both the good and the evil, and therefore with all his gifts he had a certain infirmity regarding the possibility to fall from God and to lose his gifts. He was changeably good. This is what the divines are talking about when they say uh inclined to change. But we shall not be able to will anything but the good, just as the wicked are inclined and led to do evil only because they're wicked, so we shall be inclined to that which is good and love and choose it alone because we shall be unchangeably good. We shall then be so fully established in righteousness and conformity to God that it will not be possible for us to fall from him. Yea, it will be then impossible for us to will anything that is evil because we shall be preserved by divine grace in that state of perfect liberty in which the will will choose the good only.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

So when we say man's chief end is glorify God and enjoy him forever, we don't even fathom what that is going to mean when we're in this final state. Something we should look forward to as Christians. God has given tremendous hope for us to long for, work towards, push forward towards

Hope, Wrap Up, And Farewell

SPEAKER_01 25:55

in this Christian faith. Well, Drew, thank you for being with us today and working through chapter four. Thank you. And I don't know, our kids will be babies will be graduating when we're done the confession of faith.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

Oh, hopefully not.

SPEAKER_01 26:13

Uh no. We we trust that in some way this stirs in you, the listener, a love first and foremost for God's word and for the Lord of the Word, but also an appreciation for the confessions of the faith. It was great to have a young man come up to me after church today and ask about the Hadabar Catechism, which you were just quoting, that long quote of uh I think that was a quote from the from the commentary on the catechism. Yeah, the commentary on the catechism. Yeah, I mean, what is it, like a thousand pages?

SPEAKER_00 26:44

I think it I have it on a in a PDF on my computer, and it's it's like a thousand some pages.

SPEAKER_01 26:50

But that's what we want. We want to see young and old fall in love with these ancient confessions where men of God have labored in the Word to give them to us, and it would be to our detriment to ignore them.

SPEAKER_00 27:02

Aaron Powell And produce such phenomenal resources, you know, which is still to this day. So like that was such a phenomenal explanation of what we can hope for. Absolutely. Praise God. Yeah. Far better than I could have written in that.

SPEAKER_01 27:15

We don't mind quoting. Yeah. And that's why they make footnotes. Well, thank you so much for being with us. May the Lord bless you and uh keep pressing forward in the faith. Thank you for joining us for catechizing conversations. If this podcast has uh blessed you, like it, subscribe, share it, and we greatly appreciate that. We trust you have a blessed week.