Fergus King
26 February 2025
The idea that what is “spirit” is better than “matter” is frequently found in popular Christian writing. But, is it really biblical?
In Surprised by Hope, talking about Resurrection and the new life in Christ, Tom Wright suggested claims that it is the “spirit” alone which survives after death have much more in common with ancient Greek thinking. In contrast, the New Testament always stresses a material or physical dimension to the new life in Christ.
Furthermore, in later Christian history, heterodox groups like the Docetics (early Christians who believed that Jesus pretended to become human) used the superiority of the spirit as the basis for thinking that Jesus could never have become a real flesh and blood human being. Christian Gnostics (with their elaborate theories of esoteric secret knowledge, all rather redundant when the mystery is revealed in Christ [Colossians 1:25-2:3], and heavenly ascents) would follow.
There’s more. Particularly since the Reformation in Western Europe, some brands of Christianity have rejected the ancient understandings of sacraments arguing that the material and the physical cannot deliver spiritual blessings. If we dip into the long commentaries on the Gospel of John, for example, we can find all sorts of elaborate theories about how the Gospel reached its present form because later editors added references to sacraments (for example, in John 6) into an earlier, pristine “spiritual” narrative. Sacraments, they argue, are a belated mistake contrary to some first purely “spiritual” edition of the gospel; the product of later, feeble minds, not of Jesus, or of the Beloved Disciple. It is no coincidence, to the cynic, that the theories about additions mirror what the critics do not like. They have, to use an old image, looked into a deep well, seen their own reflection in the water at the bottom, and decided that this, indeed, is the face of early, uncorrupted Christianity.
It never had to be this way. “Spirit” does not have to reject “matter”. Claims, with apologies to Tom Wright, that this was how the Greeks thought need to be examined. Its principal exponent is often claimed to be Plato, whose bumbling second-rate deity called the Demiurge in the Timaeus is taken to indicate a separation, with matter considered inferior. This popular summary does not hold up. Arguably, Plato viewed the material as subordinate to the spiritual, but not distinct from it.
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Nor did other Greeks separate spirit and matter. The Epicureans held that the world arose from the random swerve of atoms: even a “spiritual” entity like the soul was fabricated from lighter atoms. Stoics held that their deity, also known as both Logos (word) and Pneuma (spirit) was present in every element of the created order. Neither accepted the separation of spirit and matter. Both considered the soul material.
Nor was this part of Jewish thought, which had a strong material focus, was shy of speculation about “spiritual” dimension, and did not entertain a clumsy lesser creator. Ideas of life after death became more prominent as the likelihood of Israel’s political restoration diminished, and faithful, persecuted remnants (like the Maccabees) looked to some other kind of justification and liberation by God. Here, they drew on notions of resurrection which included a physical or material element: a Persian rather than a Greek idea.
So, there is no reason that a separation of spirit and matter must be the default setting for the first Christians, even if other dualistic modes (heaven/earth; God/ruler of this world; light/dark; above/below) still function.
With the false separation removed, the Gospel of John offers a picture in which the spiritual works with, through, and in, the material. Let us consider our three topics:
Incarnation: the Prologue makes it clear that God becomes, and is born, flesh (John 1:14). There is no reason to say God and matter cannot meet.
Sacraments: Many Anglicans understand sacraments to be “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace” which risks suggesting that only a spiritual dimension matters. This definition comes from later thinkers like Augustine of Hippo. But this is not so. Sacraments always have a material dimension. Nevertheless, John the evangelist knew, as one versed in Judaism, an understanding of sacramental materials and acts in which: ordinary material items, blessed by God, impart spiritual blessings. The objection to material items, like bread and wine, being the means through which God may bless his people is not demanded by the gospel. Nor, actually, is it demanded by the widely held Anglican definition. To focus on the spiritual alone is erroneous. There still needs to be the “outward and visible”, that is, the material, component. Sacraments make no sense without it.
Baptism, being born from above, (John 3:3) indicates that spiritual blessing in a life aligned with God in the here and now, and maintained by abiding with Jesus, is a reality. Water, a material element, is still used at the point of “birth from above. Christians believe in life before death, not just after it. Eternal life is entered at baptism, not death, but can, of course, always be frittered away through the failure to abide and remain. Material bread and wine, now the flesh and blood of Christ, sustain the disciple who remains with Jesus. How one lives in this material realm, aligned with Jesus and the Father with the help of the Spirit, replaces subjection to the prince of this world, who is an upstart pretender. The gospel makes it clear: the material process of baptism, the material work of the Incarnation, and the material work of the sacraments all enable sharing in an eternal life, which also embraces a material dimension.
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Resurrection: Jesus, raised from the dead, is not purely spiritual, but also physical. He is capable of being touched by the questioning Thomas (John 20:24-26): the logic of the story demands it. He is able to prepare food for, and eat with his disciples (John 21:9-15). The physical is not left behind, but included within eternal life.
Objections only arise if one demands, as a foundational claim, or an a priori assumption, that spirit and matter do not mix. Set that aside, and elaborate theories demanding complex, and badly done, edits of the gospel are redundant, as are claims that sacraments are a corruption. The consequences are significant: Christians cannot claim to be escaping to a pure supernatural realm, nor can they abrogate action in living well materially. We are not, to close again with Tom Wright, members of some doomsday cult, waiting for the mothership to come and take us away. We are to make a difference in the here and now because the spirit does matter.
The Reverend Dr Fergus King is Farnham Maynard Associate Professor in Ministry Education and director of the Ministry Education Centre, Trinity College Theological School.
His Stoicism and the Gospel of John: A Study of their Compatibility is due to be published soon in the series WUNT 2 by Mohr Siebeck.
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