Love Thy Body – a review
Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality
Nancy Pearcey
Baker Books, 2018
Reviewed by Don Johnson.
Nancy Pearcey’s work is a blessing for anyone who wants to evangelize among the people of modern Western culture. Love Thy Body provides an analysis of modern rationales that seem so inexplicable to conservatives of all sorts, but it is especially valuable to conservative Christians who not only see what is wrong with our world but also know where the real solution lies. To put it simply, if you want to be a better evangelist in our North American culture of the 21st century, this book will help.
I should say, however, that if you haven’t read Pearcey’s earlier work, Finding Truth, you may gain more from Love Thy Body if you read Finding Truth first. I haven’t read her earlier work, Total Truth, so perhaps I am still missing something in the overall understanding of her arguments.
Nevertheless, Love Thy Body stands on its own. The Introduction and first chapter lay out the essential premises of the book. The following chapters apply those premises to several contemporary cultural issues that are turning our culture into “a moral wasteland.” 1 The topics Pearcey addresses are abortion (“The Joy of Death”), euthanasia (“Dear Valued Constituent”), casual sex/hookup culture (“Schizoid Sex”), homosexuality (“The Body Impolitic”), transgenderism (“Transgender, Transreality”), and degraded marriage (“The Goddess of Choice Is Dead”).
The introduction touches on worldviews and explains how all value systems rest on a worldview. In the pre-modern world, “most civilizations held that reality consists of both a natural order and a moral order, integrated into an overall unity.” (p. 12) The philosophy of modernism denied the moral order, holding to materialism as the only explanation of reality. Modernism can only explain morality in materialistic terms. Post-modernism values the non-material world (feelings, impressions) as the primary reality and considers material “facts” as “merely mental constructs.” (p. 14) Although post-modernism is the dominant view today, both approaches are present in our culture. Both views devalue some aspect of reality. This devaluation reduces the force of any moral propositions so that behaviour long thought unthinkable now becomes tolerable, acceptable, or even good. Opposition to the new “good” is reprehensible intolerance. You may no longer speak up against it lest you be destroyed for your temerity.
The following quotation sums up the basic understanding of the book:
In moral questions, we are asking: What is the right way to treat people? Our answer depends on what we think people are—on what it means to be human. (Philosophers call this our anthropology.) The key to understanding all the controversial issues of our day is that the concept of the human being has likewise been fragmented into an upper and lower story. Secular thought today assumes a body/person split, with the body defined in the “fact” realm by empirical science (lower story) and the person defined in the “values” realm as the basis for rights (upper story). This dualism has created a fractured, fragmented view of the human being, in which the body is treated as separate from the authentic self. (p. 14)
Christianity holds that God created man as an embodied soul, body and spirit integrated into one unified whole. God made the whole man in his image. God made man to fulfill his purposes, his goals. Consequently, when man acts against the body, he contradicts God’s purpose and acts immorally.
If you separate the body and the person (material vs. spiritual, first story vs. second story), you tend to denigrate the body in a new kind of Gnosticism. The materialist thinks the body is nothing more than particles in motion, “with no higher purpose or meaning.” (p. 24) The postmodernist values the feeling/experience of the person far more than the body, often seeing the body as an enemy. Thus we get the “man trapped in a woman’s body” or vice-versa. Or the denial that an unborn child (or even an infant or toddler!) is a person, thus, though human, it is something easily dispensed with. Promiscuity justifies itself by valuing feeling, denying any value of bodily dignity (or the Creator’s purpose). Marriage degrades from covenant to a mere contract, one easily broken or terminated when no longer useful or satisfying.
A few more quotes will help give an idea of the main thrust of the book:
In other words, the authentic self has no connection to the body. The real person resides in the spirit, mind, will, and feelings. (p. 31)
The implication is that the body does not matter. It is not the site of the authentic self. Matter does not matter. All that matters is a person’s inner feelings or sense of self. (p. 31)
By contrast, a biblical worldview leads to a positive view of the body. It says that the biological correspondence between male and female is part of the original creation. Sexual differentiation is part of what God pronounced “very good”—morally good—which means it provides a reference point for morality. (p. 32)
With this as the foundation, Nancy Pearcey carefully and thoroughly discusses each of the topics mentioned above, considering them all from a number of angles. She helps the reader see how the lost world thinks, how their worldviews breakdown in these areas, and how we can address them with the saving message of Christ.
The book comes with an excellent Study Guide. If you have a hard copy, you probably should have a second bookmark here to flip back and forth as you work through the material. If you have a Kindle version, print the study guide out and refer to it often.
At this point, I have two criticisms to note. First, I commented above on Pearcey’s thoroughness in dealing with each topic. In each chapter, I thought there were several points when she could easily have concluded the chapter and moved on to the next topic. Instead, we find her pursuing yet another angle and showing once again how the Biblical view of personhood counters the problem yet again. In other words, it seemed at times that the book is overly repetitive. I think that this comes from the fact that the book is the product of a series of lectures, which became courses of study (both graduate and undergraduate) at the university level. Next, some other people taught the material in reading groups in a couple of different locations. Considering that kind of development, if you read the chapters as lectures you will see how the speaker (author Nancy Pearcey) works through the material considering several different angles before moving on to the next topic. The thoroughness is a bit maddening for a reader, but could be helpful if you are working through that particular issue with someone. The thoroughness gives a lot of resources on each topic.
The second criticism is related to Pearcey’s ecclesiastical connections. She is Lutheran, but that theology isn’t the issue. I find her too open to quoting as believers a wide variety of religious figures, from Dietrich Bonhoeffer to various Catholics, including the Pope. While these sources can have insight into human nature, it is distressing to see her quote them as if they are Christians.
Nevertheless, I think the book is valuable, and well worth the reader’s time for both informing the understanding and equipping evangelistic efforts. One last quote to close, her concluding paragraph:
Christians must be prepared to minister to the wounded, the refugees of the secular moral revolution whose lives have been wrecked by its false promises of freedom and autonomy. When people are persuaded that they are ultimately disconnected, atomistic selves, their relationships will grow fragile and fragmented. Those around us will increasingly suffer insecurity and loneliness. The new polarization can be an opportunity for Christian communities to become safe havens where people witness the beauty of relationships reflecting God’s own commitment and faithfulness. (p. 264)
UPDATE: Eric Newton published another review in the Journal of Biblical Theology & Worldview, found here (scroll down to page 97)
Don Johnson is the pastor of Grace Baptist Church of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada.