Postmillennial Worldview

PMW 2025-091 by Gregg Allison

Gentry note:
This article is found on the “Christ Over All” website. It is a helpful study of Christian anthropology and the importance of the material body in defining human life and countering the neo-Gnosticism of Hyper-preterism. Allison is professor of Christian theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is secretary of the Evangelical Theological Society.

Gregg Allison article:
The Embodied Person: Why I Am My Body, Not Just My Soul

Theological anthropology focuses on the doctrine of humanity and explores such topics as the nature and origin of human beings and the image of God. Historically, much discussion has been dedicated to the soul, or immaterial aspect of human nature, with little or no attention given to the body, or material aspect.[1] This essay proposes that the proper state of human beings is embodiment and seeks to rectify some of the historical and (even) contemporary oversight of embodiment. It will pursue this thesis—which I will call the “embodied person” view—by some close interaction with a contemporary theologian, Joshua Farris, and his fine work An Introduction to Theological Anthropology.[2] Both of us hold that humans are composed of soul and body but we emphasize different aspects of that dualist human constitution: Farris, the immaterial; I, the material. Continue reading →