Love Thy Body presents a history of “big ideas” severed from their historical contexts in such a way that reduces these ideas to caricature. Pearcey’s methodology is overly simplistic. At one point, for instance, she scolds a pastor who preached a sermon on heaven as being implicitly gnostic (41).įurthermore, although her fact/value distinction provides a (mostly) helpful grid for assessing this somatic revolution, it is no silver bullet. That is not to say she denies the future resurrection, but she does take some rather frustrating cues from N. Although she situates humanity within a threefold grid of creation-fall-redemption (45), Pearcey fails to accent the importance of the consummation as a distinct category.
Any true morality of the body, then, must be seen in light of this biblical teleology. In other words, we were created, both body and soul, for a purpose (telos)-the glory of God. Pearcey reminds us that we have lost a “teleological” understanding of creation. Pearcey not only demonstrates how and why our present society denigrates the body, but how Christianity offers a better alternative. The grand irony is that personhood theory has led to a gross depersonalization: in exchanging loving marriages for pornography and families for social contracts, we have exchanged the truth of God for a lie. As a result, the world does not see the body as integral to personal identity, because the authentic self is no longer seen in the created self. Personhood theory replaces biology (who I have been created to be) with psychology (how I feel or think) as the basis for human identity. One consequence has been the redefinition of personhood, where the notion of “person” (value) is severed from the body (fact). After two world wars, however, our postmodern society now seeks to impose a new set of values onto all of society, by redefining morality after its own corrupted image. By severing facts from values, modernity became a moral wasteland. Instead of upholding virtue as an objective external truth to which mankind must conform, modernity disregarded it as the subjective opinions of private individuals. Nancy Pearcey contends that abortion, euthanasia, hookup culture, homosexuality, gender ideology, and modern notions of marriage hold one thing in common: each stems from a common worldview that denigrates the body-a worldview she labels “personhood theory.”Īccording to Pearcey, the Enlightenment redefined morality. Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality, by Nancy R. Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality
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