by Kevin Hester

Conservative Protestants have been faced with significant challenges since the 1960s to respond to shifting cultural norms related to God’s creative purposes for the human body. We have seen this discussion move from the sexual revolution to feminism to abortion to homosexuality, and most recently, to transgenderism. What is abnormal has been celebrated as the new normal. But what does the Bible have to say about these issues?

Too often, conservative Protestant engagement has rested in quips about Adam and Steve or focused almost exclusively on clear biblical prohibitions against murder and sexual activity outside of a biblically defined marriage. What has been largely missing is a clearly positive, biblical theology of how the human body fits into God’s plan for humanity’s purpose and flourishing. Still worse, little of this popular discussion takes seriously the Christian template of understanding reality through the lenses of creation, fall, and redemption. This is one of the reasons that I decided to offer a course on the Theology of the Body at Welch College for the coming spring semester. In selecting textbooks for this course, I have spent much of this year reviewing several different books on this topic. I thought it might be helpful to highlight a few of these texts as the Commission for Theological Integrity provides its list of books and recommendations from 2024.

The Christian tradition as a whole has come late to a fully-orbed discussion of the human body. The Platonism prevalent in Paul’s day had a difficult time hearing his clear teaching on the importance of the body and the bodily resurrection. Instead, it took his encouragement to battle against the flesh as an indication that the body was not spiritual but merely an impediment to spiritual living. Asceticism became the answer for human depravity and a marker of spiritual growth. Protestants seemed to understand that this was not a fully biblical approach, but outside of emphases in human vocation and the good of Christian marriage did not fully develop this concept.

While roots were present earlier, much of the birth of a theology of the body may be found in the writings and reflection of Pope John Paul II. While his perspective certainly has its problems, he laid the groundwork for what would become the theology of the body which he delivered in weekly addresses between 1979 and 1984. The work would be published as his Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body (Boston: Pauline Books, 2006). The work is dense, meandering, and often difficult to understand outside of the Roman Catholic tradition. Christopher West has stepped into this space to translate and apply many of these principles into the modern setting. He has provided a commentary on John Paul II’s work, Theology of the Body Explained (Boston: Pauline Books, 2007), though it only slightly clarifies the teaching and similarly does not communicate clearly to the Protestant tradition.

Much better in this regard is his Theology of the Body for Beginners (Sandy, UT: Wellspring, 2018) which works to make clear application of the teaching to a number of contemporary challenges facing the Church including: divorce, sexual abuse, pornography, homosexuality, and gender confusion. It can be read by Protestants with significant profit but my favorite work by him, and I believe his most accessible presentation, is his Our Bodies Tell God’s Story (Ada, MI: Brazos, 2021). This work does a better job of outlining the basic principles of a Christian understanding of the body as originally outlined. While it engages some of the recent issues, its focus is largely a positive one in outlining a biblical understanding of the body as created, fallen, and redeemed in Christ. Especially helpful is his discussion of how the mystery of the body and human sexuality were designed by God to express truth about the ultimate union between Christ and the Church. Nevertheless, West’s Catholicism is evident in a number of places and shadows the full biblical clarity of the theology of the body.

Several Protestants have stepped into this space to provide a Protestant response that seeks to learn much from this teaching but to present it in a fully Protestant way. One such author is the conservative Australian Lutheran pastor, John Kleinig. Kleinig published his Wonderfully Made: A Protestant Theology of the Body (Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2021). The book focuses on the body as created and redeemed by grace. It is largely positive in its expression and engages much modern debate as an aside. Scriptural exegesis informs the discussion throughout and application is abundant as fitting a pastor. Drawing from his Lutheran tradition, he emphasizes the procreative and vocational functions of the body as created and redeemed. The goodness of the body provides the basis for the incarnation and marriage reveals the mystery of God’s redemption of a people for Himself. He rightly points out that God’s true desire for diversity is manifested in the context of marriage and that our culture has erred by seeking to separate from marriage (and our bodies) what God has designed for our good (sex and gender). While a low-church Protestant tradition can still learn from Kleinig, his discussion of the sacramental expression of these realities ultimately betrays his Lutheran sympathies and like West’s work, feels foreign at points.

Conservative Wesleyan theologian Timothy Tennent has also published a theology of the body in For the Body: Recovering a Theology of Gender, Sexuality, and the Human Body (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2020). While the book takes a slightly more political tone than I would prefer, it highlights the implications of the theology of the body for modern questions. He enumerates the goodness of God’s creation of the human body and situates it in our relational capacities in the context of society. In a Forlinsean fashion, the body as an integral, outward-facing component of self is the means whereby we engage God, others, the created order, and our selves. Creation, fall, and redemption impact all these relationships as expressed in our bodies. Like Kleinig, he includes a sacramental discussion but does so in a way that is accessible and focuses on how our bodies have become temples of God and should reveal God to those around us. Our bodies have a missional purpose rooted in the life of the Trinity. In part two of his work, he focuses upon the brokenness of our culture and speaks to how the Christian truth of a theology of the body holds the promise of the gospel and testifies to its truth. Part three introduces God’s purposes for the body in discipleship.

I appreciated Tennent’s focus on sanctification in this area, and our battles (internal and external) with the body. The promise of God’s grace and his redemption that includes our bodies was a beautiful reminder. He closes with a call to a renewed emphasis on catechesis and discipleship as we enter a post-Christian culture. While a strength of this work, the cultural backdrop and Tennent’s purposes don’t allow him space to lay out a full, Protestant vision of the theology of the body.

For that fuller vision, you need to read Gregg R. Allison’s Embodied: Living as a Whole People in a Fractured World (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2021). This was the best and fullest Protestant expression of a theology of the body that I reviewed. While he engages modern questions at points, Allison focuses on the biblical teaching that informs how we view our selves as spiritual and material beings created to live in relationship. The work is biblically informed and practical at the same time. It rightly views the body as created, fallen, and redeemed. He divides his discussion from creation to consummation and from birth to death. He touches on all aspects of what it means to live our Christian lives in a broken body in a broken world. At the same time, he articulates Christ’s incarnation in a body and our redemption as particular (individuals) and social bodies (Church) as revelatory and indispensable acts of worship. Allison embraces the reality of end-of-life issues and finds their fulfillment in the eschatological promises for the body on a renewed earth. While all these books are helpful and informative in their own way, any pastor who desires a biblical presentation of God’s design for our bodies and a way of approaching the myriad cultural issues of embodiment present in our culture today should read Allison’s book.