Assaulting Christoplatonism

Generally speaking, Western Xians are Christoplatonists, meaning they tend toward dualism. They bifurcate life between things physical and spiritual...material and immaterial, and like Plato exalt the immaterial while demonizing the physical. Xians shouldn't be dualists. It's a non-biblical worldview that fragments life and denies Christ's Lordship over all creation. This dualism impacts so many areas, but one important area of Xian teaching it has wreaked havoc on is the doctrine of the bodily resurrection.

One way to think about the Platonic influence is many Christians would say our souls are just occupying these bodies for a short time. And so most Xians look forward to being disembodied. They want to be done with the physical and move on to some wholly spiritual plane where there body isn’t measured in pounds and inches. These people will even say at the death of a loved one…”that’s not really him lying there.” Which is slightly true, but it also very un-true.

What am I saying? If you looked back to the Creation account in Genesis 2. Adam was not a human being until Adam became what the Hebrew calls nephesh…until God joined his body (dust) and spirit (breath) together. Which is to say Adam was not alive until he had both materiel and immaterial components. Your body is more than just a shell. Your body is a very real part of the real you…and it will join you, more alive than it’s ever been at the final resurrection. So what I am saying is when we die, it isn’t that our real self goes to the intermediate Heaven and our fake self goes to the grave; it’s that a real part of us goes to the intermediate Heaven and real part goes to the grave to await our bodily resurrection at the consummation of all things. I say this because a study showed that two-thirds of the people that believe in heaven don’t believe it’s a physical place.

So what's your view of eternal life? Some whispy, ethereal, spirit world existence where you get to be a wraith and float through eternity? Or is it physical? Eternal, physical life on a new redeemed planet earth?

Isn't the physical so much more exciting to think about? That's because it's true.

And why do I bring all this up? Well, if our vision of things to come doesn’t involve a new physical heaven and new physical earth that we’ll inhabit as whole, physical creatures then Satan wins. But if the physical world is made new and is redeemed then Jesus wins. So if we conceive a future where all things are indeed new—as Christ promised and Paul preached—then we are on our way toward holism. Which means we are moving away from Christoplatonism.

Jay Risner

Faith Bible Church--Edmond, OK