Incarnational Truth about Humanitys Sexual Nature

(Doing Body-friendly Theology Free from Gnostic Prudery)

by Rev. David L. Hatton, RN Can the church be a prophetic voice to the sexual condition of our modern world, when it is historically famous for tiptoeing around the subject of human sexuality? Can what we say doctrinally in this area find a public hearing, when our stated pretext to sanction such tiptoeing was the immodesty of the subject, as defined by our notorious commitment to the ethics of Victorian prudery? When society was so christianized that it supported these same prudish commitments, we enjoyed a wide audience. Today the popularity of ecclesiastical opinions has descended to the level of a political line mouthed to win Christian votes. Regardless of that latter trend or the obvious answers to the former questions, we must face the music from a higher Source. Our scrupulous loyalty to a prudish view of the body wasnt just poor theology. It was an unwittingperhaps sometimes even an idolatrouscultural investment in a heretical error. The definition of modesty it proclaimed did not arise from Scripture1 but from a trust in fig leaves as a form of morality. An honest and thorough study of the phenomenon of human nakedness biblically, historically, artistically, culturally, and psycho-socially exposes the novelty of this redefinition of modesty.2 But the average evangelical promotion of that misconception blocks us from doing theology in this crucial dimension of our human nature. To retain our longstanding allegiance to this false concept, or the heresy from which it derives, will condemn us to listening to our own echoes in a shrinking ghetto of thought. To catch up to the needs of a world that knows the bankruptcy of Victorianism, we must bravely seek a major reformation. To speak up prophetically, redemptively, and credibly at such a time as this, we must rediscover our ancient pasts body-friendly theology free from Gnostic prudery. Only then can we realistically offer todays society the treasures that we ourselves have mined from an orthodox, incarnational view of the human body and its sexuality. During the last four decades the American church has played catch up in many areas of creational reality. Southern pastors preaching racial segregation with fervent zeal were silenced only by an unflinching human-rights theology that deflated their unbiblical rhetoric. Popular preachers called the appeals of environmentalists left-wing and unchristian, until ecology was shown to be a priority in Gods creational mandates to us. Antagonism toward the arts, suspicion about healthcare alternatives, condemnation of contemporary Christian music, opposition to women in the pulpit, have all diminished through a heightened awareness of how the Bible helps us to think and act Christianly in all these areas.

Pertinent to this discussionand to evangelical honesty in self-reformis a dismantling of the churchs widespread religious loyalty to Victorian modesty by exposing the error of its claim of biblical validation. Paul and Peters adorning (1Tim 2:9-10; 1 Pet 3:3-4) was about dressing life up in holy virtues and avoiding clothing, or any other means of adorning the body, that would attract attention to self. This understanding of modesty persisted even after Victorian prudery began to influence the West. The full definition in Websters Dictionary (1828) describes this attitude succinctly, mentioning nothing about clothings use in creating a condition of true modesty:
MOD'ESTY, n. [L. modestia.] That lowly temper which accompanies a moderate estimate of one's own worth and importance. This temper when natural, springs in some measure from timidity, and in young and inexperienced persons, is allied to bashfulness and diffidence. In persons who have seen the world, and lost their natural timidity, modesty springs no less from principle than from feeling, and is manifested by retiring, unobtrusive manners, assuming less to itself than others are willing to yield, and conceding to others all due honor and respect, or even more than they expect or require. / 2. Modesty, as an act or series of acts, consists in humble, unobtrusive deportment, as opposed to extreme boldness, forwardness, arrogance, presumption, audacity or impudence. Thus we say, the petitioner urged his claims with modesty; the speaker addressed the audience with modesty. / 3. Moderation; decency. / 4. In females, modesty has the like character as in males; but the word is used also as synonymous with chastity, or purity of manners. In this sense, modesty results from purity of mind, or from the fear of disgrace and ignominy fortified by education and principle. Unaffected modesty is the sweetest charm of female excellence, the richest gem in the diadem of their honor.

In view of these Scriptural and historical facts, any ongoing adherents of Victorian prudery, especially those called to preach the Word, should honestly confess their cultural allegiance and not twist Scripture to support it. For a review my own studies, see my web page, Rebuilding a Godly View of the Unclad Human Body (http://pastordavidrn.com/files/rebuilding-links.html).
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Institutional walls have been pulled down, man-made taboos thwarted, and cultural idols shattered in the process of doing theology that promotes Gods will on earth as it is in heaven. Those wishing to explore and exposit a godly view of human sexuality face a more challenging resistance. To gain listening ears in a world that desperately needs Gods truth about sexuality, we must learn to speak in the unfamiliar language of body acceptance. We are well-practiced in measuring our speech in terms of a body taboo promoted by church tradition. But no redemptive good news about our sexual nature ever came from the language of body shame formulated by that taboo. Within evangelical hymnody, homily, and humor there is a subtle array of Gnostic attitudes toward the material world in general and toward the human body in particular.3 We often claim biblical ground for trivializing this world as not our home and for preaching a Greek dualism that neglects the importance of the body and its inherent sexual character. Pulpits are parodied for skimming over sexual issues with evasive wittiness. The expected laughter from the pew confirms the stereotype. Absence of a substantial and thorough evangelical theology of human sexualityor even a sound theology of our physical embodimentlends telltale support for this caricature of our uneasiness with sex. But in our social climate this comical denial, and the attitude it betrays, is no joking matter. Its offensive, and it has surely offended our Creator for a very long time. In the conceptual environment just described, past Bible teachers, if not lulled into Gnostic thinking themselves, have found very little demand for a creational view of the material world or for an incarnational view of the human body. Either way, the churchs ambivalence toward body acceptance sets an agenda for remedial theological work. The starting point is a pure-minded, godly attitude toward the body, including its sexual physiology. Only a Scriptural view of our sexual embodiment can exorcize the ingrained Gnostic heresy of body shame. A Creator-pleasing body-friendliness alone can derail the churchs common flight pattern from the sight of the natural gender distinctions in our visible anatomy. Only by retrieving all of our very good4 body parts from pruderys mystifying sexualization can we break the spell that binds them as hostages to pornographic exploitation. Without this positive view of our bodies in the minds of both Christian thinkers and average believers, the church may fail doctrinally to catch up to the modern worlds need for a God-honoring self-understanding of our sexual nature as humans. No archaic appeal to Victorian standards can excuse or mend the gaping holes in our teaching and preaching about humanitys sexual embodiment. Our pied piper is taking his pay. If we thought to save our children from pornographic rats by investing in his Gnostic music, we now risk losing them to his mesmerizing melody of prudery.5 We could have and should have kept our homes porn-free with the God-ordained, creational truth that underlies body acceptance. The church isnt bereft of technical knowledge about sex, nor is Christian self-help literature about sexual intimacy lacking. But our writings came late and depended too much on the trails pioneered and paved by secular sex-perts. Curious believers may end up sitting at the feet of these popular gurus who teach a materialistic perspective that disregards God and His rules and revelations about the significance of human sexuality. Yet these worldly experts were merely exploring Gods incarnational territory, while our body shame kept us away. Christians should have had the most to say about this fearfully and wonderfully made temple of the Holy Spirit,6 fashioned from cosmic dust in gender-distinguishable

Gnosticism was fought by the apostles Paul and John and by the early church father Irenaeus (Against Heresies). Three helpful resources for investigating it are the article on Gnosticism in the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, the secular article in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 3 (Macmillan: New York, 1967), and the whole of Christian History Magazine, Issue 96 (2007) called The Gnostic Hunger for Secret Knowledge."
4

Genesis 1:31; Isaiah 5:20; Titus 1:15.

For a further explanation of why a prudish view of the body is a pornographic one, and how prudery surrenders the body to pornographys exploitation and addiction, see my articles, The Pornographic View of the Body and Addiction to Pornography on the My Chains Are Gone website: http://mychainsaregone.org.
6

Psalms 139:14; 1 Corinthians 6:19-20.

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forms. Instead, we kept our speech about sex in the supposedly safe realm of moral ideas and social precepts, ignoring the mundane physical clay of our anatomy which Gods hands sculpted so carefully . Christians surely could have done a better job in this realm of information, if we had embraced a bodyfriendly theology instead of stumbling over the block of Gnostic prudery. We owed it to our Creator to have been there first, fully glorifying Him for His fantastic craftsmanship. Instead, we stood aloof, letting materialistic evolution take credit for our bodys marvelous sexuality. Even now, as late-comers, we still must be astute, unembarrassed, articulate, and current in this technical realm of knowledge. But our specific, more imperative duty is to catch up theologically, so that we can powerfully and redemptively proclaim in our modern world Gods special purposes for human sexuality.

The Theological Doorway of Praxis Doctrine is pie in the sky if it fails where the rubber meets the road. When praxis is absent in our theology, down-to-earth people justly call us so heavenly minded that we are no earthly good. Sexuality and all other aspects of the human condition must be understood and discussed in terms of practical experience. In constructing a solidly Christian world-view, our faith must not only inform our lifestyles, but what we meet in life must fit into our faith. Gaining Gods creational perspective guides us in seeing how all of human experience fits into the larger picture of His will and plan for us. It may be true that the ideal way to do theology is from principle to practice, from concept to praxis. But if, through cultural blindness, or because of an inculcated mental block, we fail to think correctly about Gods special, propositional revelation, He can turn up the volume on His general, creational revelation. This is what God has done for multiple millions who have found deliverance from prudish thinking about the bodys visible sexual distinctions through experiencing their frank exposure in a nonsexual context. If God meant us to be awestruck by our star-studded celestial canopy above or by our magnificent globe of natural wonders, how much more did He intend by this pinnacle of physical creation, His own Selfportrait in the naked human form, to launch us into praise? Unclad human bodies declare the glory of God and show forth his handiwork in a way that no other part of this universe can possibly do. But efforts to hammer out a comprehensive and comprehensible revision of a prudish world-view to match this revelation in the body is like doing theology in the dark. Realistic praxis clearly presents a rebuttal to the unrealistic assumptions inculcated by religious prudery. Sometimes forty or fifty years of that false indoctrination vanishes in a matter of minutes by the mere visual rebuke of the naked truth. Praxis has a demanding voice that refuses to be ignored. It keeps repeating what it learns about reality, until its lessons finally fit into our world-view. If our tutored concept of modesty was actually trueif the built-in human reaction to seeing the opposite sex unclad was truly what pruderys body taboo has preached to us7there would be no logical explanation for the experience of health-care workers, of artists working from nude models, or of naked people groups and those who visit them. The common explanations often invented for these and other exceptions to the rules of the body taboo invariably mention the issue of context, but when analyzed critically, these boil down to assumptions that actually offer no rational basis to explain how the context of nudity changes human natures supposedly inherent response to it. This reflexive, rationalizing attempt to maintain support for the body taboo, without an authentically logical process of reasoning to validate these exceptions, is the kind of double-mindedness that cancels any hope of doing a theology of human sexuality that is believable and transferable in our modern world. The churchs schizophrenic treatment of womens breasts exemplifies this pattern of practicing double-standards. Lactation studies around the world, in comparing America with other countries,

Evangelical sermons have often called Bathshebas publicly visible nakedness shameful for its part in King Davids fall into lustful sin (2 Samuel 11:2-4). The Bible doesnt support this view. Her outdoor bathing was a normal behavior for everyone in those days. Such preaching, however, is shameful, for it sets man-made cultural taboos above the authority of Gods Word by intimating that Scripture condemns her nudity, when it does not.

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partially attribute our higher breastfeeding-failure rate to our cultures dysfunctional sexual obsession with breasts. If the visible female breast in itself is truly obscene, as dictated by pruderys rather absolute standards of truth, how can we defend our relativism in assenting to the rest of the worlds conviction that the breasts normal exposure in breastfeeding is something wholesome? If failure to agree with the majority is indefensible, then a stubborn determination to maintain a consistent resistance is even worse. We appear puerile and even perverted in trying to defend our prudish view against the way the rest of the world perceives breasts. Our predicament is perfectly exposed in an illustration given by Carolyn Latteier, the author of Breasts, The Women's Perspective on an American Obsession:
Well, we do have a peculiar obsession with breasts in this culture. A lot of people think it's just the human nature to be fascinated with breasts but in many cultures, breasts aren't sexual at all. I interviewed a young anthropologist working with women in Mali, a country in Africa where women go around with bare breasts. They're always feeding their babies. And when she told them that in our culture men are fascinated with breasts, there was an instant shock. The women burst out laughing. They laughed so hard, they fell on the floor. They said, "You mean, men act like babies?8

We might laugh at ourselves along with them, if their recognition of our silliness in acting like babies was not so pathetically revealing. Our immaturity is wedded to a perversion. This becomes obvious in the ideological clash between Gods physiological design of breasts for nursing and societys distorted objectification of them as sexualized obscenities. Sadly, our captivation by prudery has led the church into a reputation for siding with the latter perception.9 Honest Christian thinkers cannot afford to vacillate with one foot on each of these two platforms. An ever-widening tension between these disparate perceptions about the significance of the human body, typified by this confusion over womens breasts, will inevitably produce an embarrassing split in their theological breeches. Affirming the indecency of breasts exposed for non-sexual purposes has been and will continue to be a tacit denial of their true nature as beautiful organs of nurture expressly designed by God to adorn the female gender of our race. Sound theology should inform praxis, but when theology is skewed by allowing culturally adopted conjectures to overshadow biblical truth, praxis can sometimes expose the error, as the late Bible teacher, Dr. James McKeever points out in his reprimand to the Western church:
There is a tribe, which lives on the island of West Kalimantan (formerly Dutch Borneo), who go nude because of the extreme heat. They go to church this way, and there are actually pictures of them taking communion (the Lords supper) with the entire church nude. To most Christians in America a nude communion scene would seem terrible. However, to Christians in other parts of the world, it would seem very normal and natural. It is a very difficult task to sort out in our minds what has come from our culture, our environment and our upbringing, and what is truly part of Gods character. The thing that we need to be very careful of is not to create God in our own cultural image. We need to guard against attributing characteristics to Him based on the taboos of our society. The very worst thing is to take a false image of God that we have created and to try to impose our god on other cultures.10

Dr. McKeevers words are too polite. What his criticism actually says is that Christians who preach their

8 Carolyn Latteier, from an interview on Berman & Berman's television program, "All about Breasts," aired June 4, 2002.

An excellent place to help Christians reform their immodest perceptions and treatment of the breast is Maria Millers woman-friendly website on breastfeeding, breast acceptance, breast health and breast emancipation (www.007b.com). Its argues powerfully to free the breast from its exploitive sexualization in American culture. From the chapter Nudity and Lust from Dr. James McKeevers book, Its in the Bible (Medford, Oregon: Omega Pub., 1988), p. 79. A scanned copy of this full chapter, which corroborates much of my own study (see note #2), is available for reading on my website (http://pastordavidrn.com/files/Nudity_and_Lust.PDF).
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culturally formed ideas of body shame as part of the Gospel have committed cultural idolatry. Our guilt in this regard is so historically infamous and loud that most critics, and even most Christians, have not heard how modern mission organizations try to reverse this practice by training missionaries to avoid disseminating Western prudery to these naked cultures.11 The churchs willingness to support this crossculturally sound mission policy is not matched by a willingness to confess its past errors in foreign lands, or to dispense with its ongoing enchantment with this same prudery at home. This is a form of hypocrisy easily recognized by the secular academic community and uneasily defended, when used as an invective against the Christian faith. Since prudery is not part of true Christian doctrine, we should never attempt to defend the churchs hypocritical involvement with it. Instead, we should eradicate it by discovering where the error of prudery originated and how Gnostic ideas about our bodies and the material world found sanction in the church. Actually, Victorian perceptions are relatively recent. Going back farther, we can learn much by investigating the attitudes behind some of the harsher forms of asceticism practiced by monastic hermits and often popularized by the churchs early bishops. In such historical observations we may find open doorways for an unprotected infiltration of Gnostic ideas about human embodiment, but the original entry point of this heretical error seems to be in humanitys primeval story.

Gnosticisms Attack on the Incarnational Nature of Humanity The Christian church is sitting on the richest doctrinal territory in the universe. Next to the doctrine of the Trinitarian nature of the Godhead, the doctrines of the physical Incarnation of Christ and His bodily Resurrection, are the most precious treasures in our faith. Yet we have barely scratched the surface of what these twin doctrines imply about the nature of redeemed humanitys present earthly involvement and our future destiny. Nothing explains our own incarnate nature better than Christs. His Incarnation, when fully understood, explains the reason for Gods creation of humanity in the first place. But after the Fall, Gods promise of bodily restoration, in direct conjunction with Christs own incarnate resurrection, has become the specific hope in which every believer is saved. It is also the eagerly anticipated hope of the entire spiritual and physical creation.12 The importance of our physical bodies lies in the fact that we, of all other creatures in the universe, were especially created in Gods image as body-spirit beings. We are such an intimate interweaving of spirit and matter that we are not wholly human apart from that amalgamation. Deaths separation of our spiritual and corporeal natures is only temporary, even for the lost.13 This understanding resounds from the early churchs history and struggle with the infiltration of Gnostic attitudes about the material world and the human body. Revisiting this historical battleground is not a roundabout pathway of discovery, for almost all orthodox Christian doctrine was historically formulated in responses to heresies. The phrase in

One film scene in The Emerald Forest (Boorman, 1985) contrasts the normalness of the exposed breasts of native girls with the obscenity of the civilized underwear they were forced to wear, when kidnaped and sold into prostitution. After their rescue, they immediately tore off and cast the bras to the ground as disgustingly vile. Western obsession with fig leaves didnt bring holiness to such people: The missionaries had believed they were aiding the cause of morality when they insisted converts wear clothes, only to discover, according to Smith, that the clothes the girls put on became a source of allurement to men who all their lives had taken nudity for granted! [Ruth A. Tucker in From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya (Zondervan: Grand Rapids, 1983), p. 206.] Body shame brought our own cultures problems with pornography and promiscuity to naked peoples. The Willowbank Report of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization wisely designated cultural habits of dress as matters indifferent to the Gospel ( http://www.lausanne.org/zh-TW/all-documents/lop-2.html). Todays missionaries to naked cultures discover firsthand just how indifferent the matter of dress or undress is to the Gospel, many of them adopting the same attitude toward nonsexual social nudity that I learned to accept as an RN.
12

11

Romans 8:23-24a. Matthew 5:29-30; 10:28; Revelation 20:4-6, 11-14.

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the Apostles Creed stating that God is Maker of heaven and earth was meant to keep Gnostics out of the church. Part of the ancient nude baptismal ritual for converts was to confess that human salvation culminates in the resurrection of the flesh.14 Paul, in Colossians, used Gnostic terminology (i.e., knowledge", fulness, mystery") to demonstrate the Gospels superiority over the prevalent Gnostic attitudes that were already endangering the churches. Satan lurks behind all deceit in heresy. When he introduced Gnostic deception in the Garden of Eden, its first recorded result was a false self-concept in human thinking about our body-spirit nature. In various mystery cults current in New Testament times, Gnostic gurus promised access to spiritual insight and deliverance from this defiled material world, and from our burdensome flesh, through possessing the secret knowledge hidden in the inner circles of their fellowship. In a similar and seminal way, the voice of the Satan-possessed serpent promised opened eyes and spiritual wisdom to our first parents through the divinely withheld knowledge (gnosis) in the forbidden fruit, which he knew would render them spiritually independent from God and bring them into his own demonic style of deification. Fruit from Edens tree of the knowledge of good and evil was lethal. If eaten, it could make us spiritually separate and morally independent from our Maker, just as Satan had become. Satan lured Adam and Eve to that gnosis to destroy their union with God and to distract them from feeding on that Word by which they were meant to live, the truth coming personally from the mouth of God. Feeding on that forbidden fruit set the stage for millions of different moralities in which humans independently determine what is wrong or right in their own eyes. But Satans corollary motivation might have been to plant in human thinking by that fruit the seed of a Gnostic division between the spirit and the flesh. That gnosis opened Adam and Eves moral thinking to ideas other than Gods. By his convincing suggestion of an unnatural separation in human self-understanding, Satan possibly hoped to thwart the plan for which God had made humanity as a union between the spiritual and the physical worlds. Three relationships were simultaneously fractured by Adam and Eves departure from Gods direct, personal guidance in imbibing that fruit: separation from God, discord with each other, and estrangement from their own bodies. Evangelical thought about the restorative dimensions of redemption have focused almost exclusively on those first two categories. We have, without explanation, basically ignored the third one. But of the three, Adam and Eves bodily alienation was mentioned as an immediate result of their gnosis-based independence in morally determining what was good and evil. In terms of creation, this first episode of body shame was not an intrinsically human response to opened eyes. But it could logically have been a response informed by the very devil who had helped to open them. In fact, Gods second question to Adam in Genesis 3:11 (Who told you that you were naked?) infers it. They had been taught and were functioning under a new definition for the natural state in which God had created them.15 Judging from their immediate response to this new description of their bodies, their

The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus, Ch. 21:17 (c. 215) (http://www.bombaxo.com/hippolytus.html), describes in detail the standard ritual of nude baptism, requiring a Trinitarian formula of confession like that in the Apostles Creed during a three-fold outdoor immersion in flowing water. Both genders disrobed by precept. Their nudity bore symbolic testimony to an array of doctrinal meanings, as described by Cyril of Jerusalem (313-385 AD):
As soon, then, as ye entered, ye put off your tunic; and this was an image of putting off the old man with his deeds. Having stripped yourselves, ye were naked; in this also imitating Christ, who was stripped naked on the Cross, and by His nakedness put off from Himself the principalities and powers, and openly triumphed over them on the tree. For since the adverse powers made their lair in your members, ye may no longer wear that old garment; I do not at all mean this visible one, but the old man, which waxeth corrupt in the lusts of deceit. May the soul which has once put him off, never again put him on, but say with the Spouse of Christ in the Song of Songs, I have put off my garment, how shall I put it on? O wondrous thing! ye were naked in the sight of all, and were not ashamed; for truly ye bore the likeness of the first-formed Adam, who was naked in the garden, and was not ashamed." [The Catechetical Lectures of S. Cyril, Archbishop of Jerusalem, Lecture XX, (On the Mysteries. II.), "Of Baptism", 2, in The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Vol. VII (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans)].

14

The term naked is meaningless in a context where nothing had ever yet been hidden to become naked by being uncovered. The first hidden bodies were those covered by man-made fig-leaf outfits. In a world where every created thing was without artificial coverings, Gods question to Adam highlighted the novelty of this word naked.

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liberated morality concluded that naked bodies were evil and that hiding them was good. This foreign, human-unfriendly attitude, so typical of spiritual rebellion, is a complete reversal of Gods pronouncement in Genesis 1:31 that everything that He had made . . . was very good. Satan entered this paradisial gallery of divine artwork not just to paint fig-leaf graffiti over Gods opening exhibit of nude Self-portraits. Lucifer had strong political motivation for getting us to trade an incarnational body acceptance for the alienating self-understanding in Gnostic dualism. Humans, who were made expressly in Gods image, were a special union between the two worlds of creation, cosmic and angelic. We visibly displayed within creation the transcendent Creators likeness. We imaged His immanent presence. We were His chosen ambassadors, representing and belonging to both realms, the world of matter and the world of spirit, which God intended to unite under a single divine government,16 with humans serving as its mediators. As a rebellious fallen angel, Lucifer must have cringed to imagine these new spirit beings, nakedly embodied in animal flesh, finally maturing to a point where they would judge angels,17 himself included. If their incarnate nature was the key to this divine plan, what better tactic to rupture their spiritual tie to the Maker than by seducing them to assume moral independence? And what better way to sabotage their destined cosmic dominion than by breaking their physical tie to the rest of naked creation with body shame? This is more than just a conjectural reading between the lines in Genesis. This storys climax is the basis of the Gospel. A new humanitys firstborn over all creation (NIV), by His physical body through death, achieved reconciliation not only of lost human sinners but of all things visible and invisible that were thrown off course by the first Adams failure. This second Adam, Christ, has become firstborn from among the dead, so that in all things [visible and invisible] he might have the supremacy. Eternally supreme over all things as the Creator, Jesus now has this supremacy as a true Human and is the Human Leader of a renewed human race. This role in creational supremacy is the basis of human existence and, because of Christs Incarnation and Resurrection, its the restored destiny of redeemed humanity.18 This Gospel was in some mysterious way preached to all creation, just as the Colossians passage literally states. Also mysteriously, the entire creation of spirit and matter somehow knows about and eagerly anticipates its own liberation at the arrival of the glorious freedom of the children of God in their resurrected bodies. All creation, comprising both the cosmos and the angelic realm,19 is waiting for the bodily manifestation of the children of God that will renew and complete the original plan our Creator had for the human race. In eternal physical bodies, like the glorified body of our Savior, Christs corporate Bride, the Church, will forever reign with our supreme Human Bridegroom, the King of kings and Lord of lords, ruling over creations anxiously awaited new heaven and new earth. Failing to see humanity through the lens of Gods ultimate plan for us can make our presentation of the Gospel more self-centered than authentically human-friendly. Evangelistic appeals become narrow and nearsighted when selfishly motivated. While reaching heaven and missing hell are strong goals, they are basically individualistic and fall short of telling potential converts why humans even exist, and why the Christian Gospel foretells a coming resurrection that will restore us to a complete physical reintegration in exactly the way Christs bodily Resurrection established His own perpetually incarnate

This divine objective is clearly fulfilled by humanitys career in the God-Man, Jesus Christ, as seen by a thoughtful reading of the interrelated passages of Colossians 1:15-23, Romans 8:19-24a, and Philippians 2:5-11.
17 Satan might have known or guessed this from Gods mandate for humans to have dominion over" (Genesis 1:26, 28), but we know this directly from 1 Corinthians 6:2-3.

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This astronomically broad cosmic and angelic dimension in Christs incarnational death is not new but unfamiliar Scriptural territory to an evangelical theology that focuses on human redemption as an end in itself. The Colossian passage (1:15-23) throws light on humanitys pivotal role in creation, but the big picture is not all about us. Its about how the body-spirit nature and creational purpose of humanity is fulfilled in our original role as servant-leaders, a job that was taken on and re-established by the Person and work of the Incarnate Son of God.
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Angels have personal interest in our story (1 Peter 1:12) and personal joy in our conversion (Luke 15:10).

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humanity.20 As the ordained caretakers of the universe, redeemed humanity has a destiny of corporate servanthood that will extend beyond a joyful heavenly residence to a vocational jurisdiction over the whole universe. A Gnostic disinterest in the material world and detachment from our dusty bodies have distracted us from our divine calling. Weve been tickling Charlies soul with a golden ticket to get him through the gate for the joys of the Candy Factory. But like Willy Wonkas fictional goal for Charlie, God plans to put us in charge of the entire estate. Hes not bringing us to heaven for an eternal good time. He wants us to run it and everything else. Heaven is just our stop-over until Resurrection Day, when God will finally establish us in our proper role of stewardship over a renewed physical and spiritual creation. But this time, the redeemed and restored human race will not fail to carry out this governing assignment, because we will have the Creator of the universe as our supreme Human Leader in the task!

Human Sexuality as a Trinitarian Image and Divine Mandate Understanding Gods ultimate plan for humanity ought to give us a new apologetic standard. In confronting ideas from a nonchristian or unchristian world-view, we need to ask the question, Is that concept human-friendly? The only user-friendly concepts for humanity are those based on human nature as God designed it originally and as He restores it in Christ. Once the spell of enchantment with Gnostic prudery is broken, a veil is lifted from the mind, the legalistic blindness of satanically opened eyes is healed, and human-friendly sight is restored. We suddenly see how far away the concept of body shame drew us from a true understanding of human nature. We begin to realize how body acceptance is not just a human-friendly view of our incarnate nature, but a God-friendly attitude of homage to His handiwork. This type of awareness is confirmed through a variety of resources and evidences, including a careful and thoughtful review of many Bible passages, when they are read again without the culture-tinted spectacles of prudery.21 Unlike us, those living in biblical times had much more exposure to common routines that made occasional nudity a normal part of life. A human-friendly re-reading of Scripture can also reveal a better understanding of how God has not only used our sexuality to symbolize His divine plan for human salvation, but how our very bodies visually image the attributes of our Triune Creator. One stark example of this symbolism is Gods use of penile circumcision to signifyin a very noticeable wayHis Old Covenant with Israel. God promised to bless all the world through Abrahams offspring, whom we now know to be Christ. By placing this intimate physical sign on that special part of the male body, God was reminding the Jews that His promise to Abraham was especially focused on His original mandate to humanity: be fruitful and multiply. Physiologically, the connection is obvious. A missing foreskin makes a naked penis even more naked. Circumcision offers its viewers a perpetually visible glans penis, which is usually only exposed by penile erection. That sight symbolically displayed the functional state of the penis preceding sexual intercourse, which in turn reminded the Jewish people of the way the promise to Abraham would be fulfilled. In Bible times, this was a truly legitimate sign, because it was a common sight and, therefore, a socially visible identifier of the Covenant. Male genitals were seen rather routinely during the public activities of bathing, urination, and even during outdoor and indoor manual labor.22 The normalness of its occasional visibility confirmed its purpose as a valid sign,

Act 4:2, 33; 17:18, 32; 23:6; 24:15. Evangelism should emphasize the hope of bodily resurrection. See my poem I Sing the Body Immortal (http://pastordavidrn.com/files/poem-isingthebodyimmortal.pdf), which supplements Whitmans praise of the body in I Sing the Body Electric with the Gospel message of resurrection. The annotated version of my fictional story Meeting at the River, found on the website referenced in note #1, has a large section dealing specifically with this kind of review of many Bible passages. The shame of nakedness in Bible times is always related to contexts of coercion, military defeat, poverty (both physical and spiritual), or sexual violations and disrespect, but never to the bodys normal exposure in work (Exodus 22:26-27; John 21:7 [lit.]), in a prophetic role (Isaiah 20:2-4; Micah 1:8; 1 Samuel 19:23-24), or in outdoor bathing (Exodus 2:5-7; 2 Samuel 12:1-9), all of which made the naked body visible to friends, family, and neighbors.
22 21

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but its ordinary exposure had no obscene connotation, as it might today. If ancient culture had been like ours, with an almost universal belief in the moral necessity of always hiding the genitals, God could not have used circumcision as an authentically visible reminder of His promise. In fact, our prudery has effectively blinded us from even seeing that such a sexually explicit sign was Gods express intention. Another instance of divine teaching that shines from the human body is how the placement and purpose of female breasts contribute to symbolize Gods very own nurturing nature. Nothing in creation surpasses the beauty of a naked newborn feeding skin-to-skin against his mothers naked bosom, enfolded close to her heart by loving arms.23 God uses this manner of maternal-child bonding in Isaiah 66:11-1324 to paint a portrait of His care for us. But our societys dysfunctional treatment of the breast as sexually obscene has rendered this divinely-given anatomical illustration invisible in practice, and thus ineffective in principle. Proof of this is seen even in the churchs human-unfriendly custom of sending nursing moms to the cry room, rather than allowing believers to witness Gods primary purpose for breasts by encouraging mothers to breast-feed openly in the congregation. The divine cure for our cultures insane obsession with breasts is not to hide them, but to let their frank visibility exorcize the spirit of prudery that has logically surrendered them to the realm of pornography. Breasts are Gods territory, and from the very beginning they were beautifully fashioned as organs to identify feminine personality and to nurture new human life. He did not design them as objects of sexual enticement, which their perpetual hiddenness in Western society has turned them into.25 Another, more speculative concept about the bodys portrayal of divine truth or teaching is in the original possibility of a world full of naked humans. This is implied by Gods command to our first parents, Be fruitful, and multiply and fill the earth. That humans, in male and female bodies, were meant to reflect or represent the Triune Godhead is clear from the wording in Genesis 1:26-27, Let us make man in our image, in our likeness . . . So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. But when He created us, we were naked, the way we still come into this world and leave it. As a Society of Three Beings dwelling in light, the Godhead is entirely and eternally open to One Another. Their holy openness is a perfect social nakedness far beyond our mortal imagination. If humanity was supposed to image the Godhead bodily as His social Selfportrait ("Let us . . . in our image"), then the society of naked humans with which He intended to populate this planet, by virtue of their very nakedness, would have represented the social openness within the Trinity. Gods call for the first naked couple to reproduce themselves seems to fit with His intention for a united human society of naked truth and light to rule creation as the ambassadorial representatives of His own nakedly open Tri-unity. Not too long ago, a human-friendly movement promoting body acceptance started among Roman Catholics. Among several Catholic teachers helping to disseminate it is a Catholic catechist, Christopher West, whose articulate preaching is spreading it within the Catholic Church in America and abroad. His exposition of the theological truths about the body and its sexual nature found in the Theology of the Body (TOB) by Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) has recently been welcomed in Protestant settings, even by one of the larger churches in my own denomination.26 These teachings in the TOB are landmark.

Hospitals across America, by intentional policy, are beginning to promote skin-to-skin cuddling and breast-feeding through literature that describes the benefits of naked baby against moms bare chest.
24 The Message paraphrases it this way: You newborns can satisfy yourselves at her nurturing breasts. Yes, delight yourselves and drink your fill at her ample bosom. Gods Message: Ill pour robust well-being into her like a river, the glory of nations like a river in flood. Youll nurse at her breasts, nestle in her bosom, and be bounced on her knees. As a mother comforts her child, so Ill comfort you. You will be comforted in Jerusalem.

23

A radio talk by Fr. Thomas J. Loya of the Byzantine Catholic Church encourages the publicly visible breast in breast-feeding as a wholesome preventative against the breasts abuse in pornography. Listen to it online or download it from: http://www.catholicradiointernational.com/abodyoftruth/mp3/abot_072108.mp3.
26

25

Skyline Wesleyan (Feb, 2010). Wests talk is available on their website (www.skylinechurch.org).

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Nothing in all of church history even approaches its comprehensive theological explanation of human sexuality.27 Among the many insights that Christopher West shares from the TOB, three stand out: One is that the loving, one-flesh sexual union of marriage was meant to be a bodily image of the loving mystery of unity within the Trinity, and as that Trinity of Love produces creation and life, so the likeness of the Godhead in wedded sexual love was meant to procreate human life. A second theme is that the spousal relationship is a bodily sign or sacrament which symbolizes, by the females receptivity toward the males loving gift, our relationship to God in salvation. This marriage metaphor starts in Genesis and continues frequently throughout the Bible until its consummation in Revelation, where the Lamb and His Bride are forever joined in marriage. A third notable concept, a part of the TOB but further developed by the present pope, is the mutually necessary interrelationship of eros and agape, both of which come from Gods very nature as Love and are intended to be the fulfillment of human sexual love physically and spiritually. The TOB exposes the heretical roots of prudery in no uncertain terms, directly confronting the concepts of Gnosticism historically manifested in the heresy of Manichaeism. Although the TOB and Christopher Wests teachings are often intermingled with Roman Catholic language and ideas, they deserve an openminded Protestant hearing. We may disagree with Catholics in certain areas of tradition and doctrine, but the bulk of insights and information in the TOB can help jump-start us in pursuing a long overdue theology of our embodied sexuality. Wojtyla, who composed this work prior to his papal election, set a precedent for theological soundness in this area. His TOB exemplifies the God-honoring, down-to-earth, and relevant answers needed by a sexually crippled society which has missed Gods absolutely essential agape in its disordered grasp for His very good eros.

Where a Major Paradigm Shift Could Take Us When one Methodist minister I met heard me share the views expressed in this paper, he exclaimed, This is nothing less than a major paradigm shift in thinking. Christopher West uses similar words to describe the spousal love of Christ in dying for us on the cross:
Contemplating the naked Christ and his body given up for us compels a radical paradigm shift both in the way we view God (theology) and in the way we view ourselves (anthropology), especially with regard to our own sexual embodiment.28

My minister friend went on to say exactly what I had been thinking . . . that someone well-known and respected among evangelicals needs to hear this, get convinced, and start spreading this liberating good news (which is also what Mr. West calls it). Catholics have no one commanding more respect and attention than their previous pope. His energetic spokesman, Christopher West, is already familiar and well-received among them. But who will stand up in the evangelical world and broadcast this biblical paradigm about our sexual bodies? Small voices, like my own, make a small noise. What is needed is a larger, louder voice, like that of a denomination. I would like to close this long essay by suggesting what might follow, if this major paradigm shift was adopted and voiced by an evangelical group of churches. What are a few possible results and unforeseen effects that leaving Gnostic prudery and embracing an incarnational view of the human body and its sexuality might bring? As a Wesleyan minister, I support my own denominations commitment to one missionthe
Information about the TOB is available on Mr. Wests website: http://www.christopherwest.com. I have a talk he presented to a Protestant group on my own website (http://pastordavidrn.com/files/IntroTOB-CW.mp3). His whole series of talks, entitled Naked Without Shame, are available for free download on MP3 files, or as an inexpensive set of CD-ROM disks, from this web address: http://www.giftfoundation.org/products_naked.cfm.
28 27

Christopher West, Theology of the Body Explained (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 2007), p. 48.

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spreading of scriptural holiness throughout every land.29 Unfortunately, we have not always spread a holiness that was free from a Gnostic view of human nature and calling. Our embodied holiness is the primary spirituality God intends.30 It should have more in common with a close walk with God that fulfills the original do-mandates in Genesis 1-2 than it does with a scrupulous obedience to man-made dont-lists for behavior that is too often mistaken for holiness. Incarnational holiness is first human wholeness, through Christs salvation and healing, and then holistic commission, through the Holy Spirits sanctifying empowerment. Fostering holiness in sync with our body-spirit nature, is not foreign to Wesleyan thinking, but somewhat forgotten. The social action that marked John Wesleys ministry included promoting bodily health and social equity in personal rights and roles despite gender or skin color. But what might happen if we genuinely and radically adopted a creational view of holiness intrinsically tied to our physical embodiment in the material world? Creating an atmosphere of body acceptance in our churches as a godly, holy attitude, might lead some Wesleyans to find as authentic a spiritual calling in nursing, chiropractic, massage therapy, or other health-related vocations, as in a call to pastoral ministry. Frankly discussing sexual issues with our youth on the solid basis of a God-honoring, non-prudish theology of our sexual embodiment, could become the present ounce of prevention for episodes of sexual immorality worth a future pound of cure for them after the fact. A heightened desire to see healing brought to those wounded through promiscuity, gender confusion, and sexual trauma could manifest within congregations as a new sense of calling for ministry teams to specialize in the divine truths underlying sexual wholeness and to seek the Holy Spirits anointing for carefully and compassionately apply them. Freedom from prudery may allow some churches to point to a Sistine-Chapel-like array of nude figures painted on its ceiling as an encouragement of holy thoughts and as a social declaration of faith in the goodness and glory in Gods creation of our physical male and female bodies. A persistent commitment to Gnostic prudery might make these possibilities seem unspiritual, but they embody an incarnational holiness that our world needed yesterday and still desperately needs today. Replacing Gnostic prudery with a godly body acceptance would signal an invitation that might draw many more artists to the church. Art students are told by their instructors that to become great artists, you must learn to draw from the naked human form. In life drawing classes using nude models, skeptical Christian artists usually get converted to that same opinion.31 But the church in its present state generally has a reputation for resisting what artists learn in that environment and censoring what they produce from their observations there. In commenting on the censorship fostered by that kind of resistence, Madeleine lEngle writes,
I would not hide the human body . . . , as though it was something to be ashamed ofthough neither would I flaunt it. Let it be natural and holy. The incarnation was a total affirmation of the dignity of this body, and Paul goes on to emphasize that we are, moreover, the temple of the Holy Spirit, and if we abuse or reject or ignore our bodies we are abusing and rejecting and ignoring this temple. I was both amused and appalled in a rotunda in the Prado, filled with Greek and Roman statues, to see

29

The Discipline of The Wesleyan Church, Ch. 2, 100.

Jesus took on the form and body of a human being. This event makes the human body . . . a chosen instrument of salvation. God sees it as a worthy vehicle for the completion of divine purposes. We may not, then dismiss or denigrate our bodies . . . . we must think of our bodies and spirits as an integrated being, and we must care for the whole self. How we treat our physical selves . . . has spiritual implications. ["Meeting God in the Created Order in The Spiritual Formation Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999), p. 829]. See the art policy of Gordon College (http://www.pastordavidrn.com/files/ArtPolicyOnNudeModels.pdf). I personally know two Christians teachers of college life drawing art classes. Artist Fiona Gruber wrote, In an age where everything, from the sale of shoes to the drinking of coffee, is sexualized, it's refreshingly innocent to spend a couple of hours painting a naked body without a hint of carnal allure.
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Page 12 that all the genitals had been removed, and covered with some kind of leaf. This prudery is in itself a form of pornography.32

Thinkers like lEngle can see this hypocrisy but stay loyal to the church. Artists who do not share her faith may reject the church for its prudery. Each session of drawing or painting or sculpting from a nude model affirms to them the goodness of the body and offers yet another occasion to confirm such disparaging thoughts as, The church lied to us about the human body . . . how perverted to call its beauty obscene . . . they must have dirty minds. One very influential art instructor of the past wrote,
"There is nothing in all the world more beautiful or significant of the laws of the universe than the nude human body. In fact it is not only among artists but among all people that a greater appreciation and respect for the human body should develop. When we respect the nude we will no longer have any shame about it."33

We can learn from the old Catholic churches in Europe that the unclad body placed in a context of holy thinking can break the spell of body shame. Imagine a fund-raising art exhibition in a church parking lot where compositions using nudity are right beside lovely landscapes. Imagine the assistant pastor being one of the artists who painted the nudes. Imagine a week-day course for training life models held in a church classroom, and an out-of-work Sunday school teacher enrolling in it. These possibilities would be radical but wholesome statements of a reformed attitude toward the body in our church environment. But we need never worry about them happening, as long as vain imaginations about human nakedness and a sexualized view of body parts remain firmly planted in our preaching of Christs Gospel. If the church had not abandoned our bodies to Gnostic prudery, we could have become the worlds expert sex educators. Adults like myself would not have grown up having to learn about sex by trying to piece the puzzle together from dirty jokes told in the schoolyard. Christian parents and Sunday school teachers could have saved us from such filth. The public school system finally came to the rescue with sex education sessions in high school social studies classes, telling the physical truth about our bodies, disconnected, of course, from moral content. When the devastating sexual revolution of the 1960-70s came, it flourished in the social vacuum created by the churchs prudish silence. The new morality of sexually doing your own thing replaced much of that religious prudishness with widespread immorality in society. It also marginalized any voice the church had in sexual matters. But the sexual realm is still Gods realm. By shunning it, we invited that revolution. As Calvin Seerveld said, Any field of life where Christians withdraw simply goes to hell. Although its late, its never too late for repentance. Its never too late to recant the heresy of Gnostic influences in Christian thinking. Its never too late for the church to begin restitution by planning an intentional strategy of sex-education that will be as visually clear about the truth physiologically as it is conceptually clear about the truth doctrinally and morally. Closely related to theologically-sound sex education is the need for skill and wisdom in the realm of sexual healing. Gnostic dualism has led our culture to segregate the bodys sexuality from personal identity, creating moral indifference toward sexual activity.34 This conceptual rift is conducive not only

Madeleine LEngle, Walking on Water Reflections on Faith and Art (Wheaton, Illinois: Harold Shaw, 1980), pp. 187-188.
33

32

Robert Henri, The Art Spirit (Harper & Row; New York, 1984), p. 47.

Gnosticism has another face: Generally, the pneumatic [ie., spiritual"] morality is determined by hostility toward the world and contempt for all mundane ties. From this principle, however, two contrary conclusions could be drawn, and both found their extreme partisans: the ascetic and the libertine. The ascetic deduces from the possession of gnosis the obligation to avoid further contamination by the world and therefore to reduce the worlds use to a minimum; the libertine derives from the same possession the privilege of unrestrained freedom.... Thus the pneumatic, since he is free from the power of fate, is also free from the yoke of the moral law, and all things are permitted to him. ["Gnosticism, The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 3 (Macmillan: New York, 1967), p.340].

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to promiscuity but to gender confusion. Christians, more than any group, ought to have been emphatically resistant to the concept of a split personality in our nature as body-spirit beings. But we ourselves were contaminated with that Gnostic division in our own thinking, and it has undermined our credibility. A holistic approach recognizes that sins of sexual immorality may not always stem from rebellion. Missing the mark of godly sexual adjustment may be deeply rooted in formative personal histories. Those raised in a parental environment without a nurturing balance in gender influences may have sought to fulfill the developmental deficits created in them by participating in sexual activity that is both dysfunctional and sinful. For effective healing and restoration, our theology must speak to aberrant sexual behavior from a clear understanding of the balance of masculine and feminine attributes inherent in the original human personality, which was made in the image of God as male and female. We must preach an integrated conception of human nature, focusing upon our sexual anatomy as Gods voice in identifying personal gender,35 and upon the gender balance in a redemptively restored image of God through the perfect balance found in Christ.36 Knowing the grace of God and Christs power to heal, if we promote and preach a proper theological basis in human sexuality and sexual understanding, we may find our congregations full of those seeking sexual healing for a variety of needs. A similar need today, especially among Christian men, is for deliverance from pornography addiction. The divine antidote to the contagion of pornography is a God-honoring, creational view of the unclad human body that rejects Gnostic pruderywhich I have more functionally described by the term porno-prudery. A prudish view of the body is itself a pornographic one, because both pornography and prudery see only the bodys sexual impact upon the observer. As a result, the prudish view lays a substantial foundation for nudity's abuse in the obscenities of porn. By porno-prudery, we have been trying to resist the enemy with his own weapon, as if trying to combat a fire with gasoline instead of water. But we cannot fight Satans distortion of Gods image with the lie that created the distortion. Again, recanting and repentance are necessary, but restitution will not be easy. How does Every Man stop bouncing the eyes at the female form and start beholding it with the eyes of Christ?37 The unnaturalness and immaturity of porno-prudery must be replaced with a sane and wholesome body acceptance that will allow Christians to view Gods glory on European beaches the same way missionaries observe it in naked people cultures. The church that takes a stand on the goodness and God-glorifying nature of the human body, naked or clothed, will be a healing place where porn-addicts can be set free from vainly imagined misrepresentations of Gods image by embracing the the truth. If male and female bodies sexually united in marriage symbolize not just Trinitarian love and unity but human redemption in our relationship with Christ, where do singles find their validation? It is
Whatever its autobiographical roots, homosexuality will ultimately find in physiology and anatomy not friends, but foes. Christians have pointed this out from the sidelines, so to speak. But in a theological insistence on our body-spirit nature as humans, this becomes a much stronger fundamental argument against gay polemics.
36 35

2 Corinthians 4:4.

Jesus stands for reverence for the personality of the woman. In one place it is said of Jesus, He laid his hands upon her: and immediately she was made straight. When the hands of a good deal of modern teaching are laid on woman, immediately she is made crooked. Jesus insisted that she not be a means to a mans ends, but that she is an end in herself, and must be treated as such. Looking on her as a sex-being and that alone is adulterous thinking. The whole of the purdah idea, while ostensibly to protect the purity of the woman, looks on woman only as a creature of sex, and is therefore essentially adulterous in its thinking. The holiest among the Pharisees were called the bleeding Pharisees. They went around with their eyes on the ground, lest they look on a woman, and as they were constantly bumping against trees and posts and walls, they had bleeding foreheadshence holy. How sane and yet how severe Jesus was! He lifted up mens eyes to look frankly at life, but in that freedom there was the restraint of an inner purity. [E. Stanley Jones , The Christ of the Mount (Abandon: Nashville, 1981), p. 148-149]. The Eastern purdah concept (keeping women fully covered and separate from society) leads not to pure but adulterous thinking. A false, sexualized view of the female body inevitably objectifies women. But this logic, and the holiness strategy of the bleeding Pharisees, is replicated in the popular evangelical principle of bouncing your eyes found in the widely acclaimed Every Mans Battle perspective. This view not only degrades women but has failure built into it.

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significant that the first and only full theology of human sexuality has been worked out by a celibate pope and that his successor has continued his theme.38 Protestant shunning of Catholic celibacy has cut us off from a wealth of explanatory theology concerning how our sexuality and its fulfillment relate to a state of singleness. When marriage is preached as the ideal way for us as sexual beings to realize sexual contentment, singles are automatically marginalized. Also, by often treating it as a key preventative for sexual immorality, we have perhaps unwittingly recruited earthly marriage for a role that sabotages its true purpose. Prudery, by diligently suppressing our sexual nature, attempts to hold off sexual selfgratification until marriage. But such a goal logically treats lustful attitudes as humanly normal and inevitable, which they are not. That focus may not only frustrate singles but predispose them to anticipate marriage lasciviously, and when finally married, to dishonor the spousal bond of affection with inordinate sexual behavior. When our sexuality, both in singleness and marriage, is mentally sanctified and lived out in terms of our ultimate spousal union with Christ as His corporate Bride, personal sexual fulfillment can become both chaste and spiritually productive. Our sexuality is a divine gift of grace and a powerful force that reaches beyond marital intimacy and procreation. As E. Stanley Jones has written, when God is allowed to use the powers of sex as creative activity in creating newborn souls, movements, music, art, poetry, constructive achievement . . . . the whole conception of sex [is] transformed from shame and fear to acceptance and appreciation.39 Singles will never feel second-class or disenfranchised in a church where both singles and marrieds are taught to rejoice in their sexuality as an embodied display of Gods own holy and creative nature. The church that leaves Gnostic pruderyto embrace the body acceptance found in an incarnational understanding of human nature and sexualitymay see an array of new faces in its meetings. An influx of people with damaged sexual integrity and those seeking gender realignment and special sexual healing will require new approaches to redemptive ministry in those areas.40 Artists may come who once shunned the religious prudery that silently slandered Gods masterpiece in the unclad human form. Adam and Eve may appear again in their pre-fallen splendor on that churchs ceilings. A naked Savior might reappear on the sanctuary walls in His baptism, crucifixion and resurrection.41 New young people may show up who have witnessed in their Christian peers a more integrated, more human-friendly view of the bodys sexuality than any secular voice can offer. Among its new visitors and potential members may be those who were raised already rejecting the body taboo in a nudist family upbringing or who discovered body acceptance on a clothing optional beach somewhere. These people especially, whom we have often castigated as profligates or ostracized as perverts, deserve our welcome and a long-overdue invitation to sit beside us under biblical preaching. In view of traditional nudisms strict ethical standards and united voice in favorable personal testimony, the greatest aspect of folly and shame in its reputation has not been its practice of mixed social nudity, but the churchs long history of answering nudist arguments with loud condemnation before listening to its logical basis or investigating its moral philosophy.42

See Christopher Wests exposition of Pope Benedict XVIs views on eros and agape in the Love That Satisfies (West Chester, Pennsylvania: Ascension Press, 2007).
39

38

E. Stanley Jones, How to Be a Transformed Person (New York: Abington-Cokesbury, 1951), p. 216.

One successful approach to sexual and gender healing, based on an integration of theology, psychology, and Spirit-empowered prayer, is from the work of Pastoral Care Ministries, founded by Leanne Payne. Among the recorded and written resources available from her website (http://www.leannepayne.org/home/index.php) is her foundational book, The Healing Presence: Curing the Soul through Union with Christ (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1995). Christ was baptized naked in the way of the Jewish mikveh, crucified naked in the way of Roman torture, and rose again naked in the Scripturally accurate way Mel Gibson finally depicted it in The Passion (John 20:3-7). Proverbs 18:13. Honesty will inevitably lead researchers to grapple with nudist arguments. Rather than misuse the pulpit with ignorant assumptions about nudists, as I did, I suggest first wrestling with the 205 Arguments and Observations in Support of Naturism (http://www.naturistsociety.com/resources/PDF/205ARGUE.pdf).
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By throwing open to all these sorts of people the church doors that porno-prudery had formerly closed to them, there will inevitably be reactions from Christians who cannot renounce their lifelong loyalty to elements of Gnostic dualism in their thinking. Traditional corporate attitudes, even if theologically unsound, are not easily altered. Reformation in our conception and treatment of the body and its sexuality is as much the task of addressing strong cultural ties and habits as it is the challenge of expounding biblical and theological truth. In H. R. Rookmaakers lectures at Westminster Seminary in 1976, he offered some helpful advice:
"Even if we do gain a new perspective on sex and nudity and our bodies, this doesnt mean that we can change everything by tomorrow. Theres too much emotion involved, because these things are so very deep and important. Also, the way we were raised and the things that have been brought to us from our own background go very deep and its very difficult to just jump out of them. So, when a young artist comes to me and he says: Im in the academy, but I have difficulties in going to the life-drawing class my first reaction would be: Why dont you try it, because you will find out in five minutes that its not as you think. It has nothing to do with sex. But if you continue to have difficulties, you know theres Christian freedom and theres no one whos going to force you."43

Having the idol of a cultural body taboo prophetically smashed may be the need of some, but the bulk of the church must be led gently and gradually away from habits of chewing legalistic fruit from the gnosis of good and evil that perpetuates body shame. An iconoclasm of Gnostic attitudes must start theologically and progress pastorally. But what we must not do is to try to preserve a peaceful ghetto with our status quo. We are instructed to walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil.44 Our Gnosticism must be cast out, along with its porno-prudery. Both have directly dishonored our Creator and have utterly failed to bring the godly changes needed by our sex-obsessed, sexually aberrant culture. We must not just sit tight on these insights, because the social problems and sins in the realm of body shame and misguided sexuality are many, and they wont just go away by ignoring them. The growing treatment of casual sex as commonplace and of exploited nudity as acceptable is already pushing our society toward a decadent and destructive future. Unless we equip our children and grandchildren with the right theological toolsrediscovering them first for ourselves and then realistically exemplifying their usesubsequent generations may simply acquiesce to that dismal future instead of speaking to it prophetically and redemptively. One pastor, with whom I shared this creational view of the body, replied that he hated to discourage me, but nothing would ever change, neither in the church nor in societywe would just have to face that fact. Well, I cant do that, and I wont. We were clearly mistaken to think that pornoprudery would save and sanctify us. We were deceived. It was never sound theology, and its wrong to pass it on as a religious cultural heirloom to tomorrows Christians. There is an ever-shrinking limit to how deeply we can withdraw into a shell of neglect and denial, and we are close to that limit in how we have dealt with humanitys sexual embodiment. The better way, and the God-honoring way, is to boldly start now to do a theology of human sexuality that is free from the body shame of Gnostic porno-prudery. We need not fear that forsaking our familiar and comfortable taboos will open the proverbial Pandoras box even further. It was sufficiently opened by our first parents who fully released its curses, including all the sexual pain and sorrow multiplying in our world today. We must go back to Genesis, back to the original creation, back to Gods original ideas and plans, which are being renewed and restored by Christs incarnate work. There, at the bottom of Pandoras box, according to the illustration in the Greek myth, we will find one last thing that both we and this world badly need in the realm of our sexuality: theological hope.

Rookmaaker, Nudity in The Complete Works of Hans Rookmaaker on CD-ROM (Carlisle, UK: Piquant Editions), 3:455.
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43

Ephesians 5:15-16.