Sexual Salvation (Part 1) – The Problem of Dualism

Introduction

Although I spent the two previous posts (part 1, part 2) critiquing purity culture and their view that any sexual feelings or actions outside of marriage are wrong and need to be eliminated, there are other Christians who take the opposite view – that there’s nothing wrong with sex outside of marriage.¹

James Nelson, in his book, Embodiment, makes the startling claim that the sexual ascetic (those who deny their sexuality) and the sexual libertine (those who freely indulge in theirs) both share the same underlying problem. They both see the body as a machine.

The ascetic experiences the body as a dangerous, alien force to be sternly controlled, even crushed into submission… For the libertine, the body becomes the instrument of sensuality. It is driven in a restless pursuit of pleasure. It is detached from the ego’s vulnerability and capacity for self-surrender.²

Dualism and Body Alienation

According to Nelson, the root problem behind both the ascetic and the libertine is dualism – “the sense of two different elements which may live together in an uneasy truce but are frequently in conflict. They are essentially foreign to each other.”³ More specifically, he is referring to mind/body dualism – the idea that an individual’s mind and body are separate, distinct entities at odds with one another.

The question of how the mind and the body are related is as old as philosophy itself and is still being debated today. To vastly oversimplify the issue, there are basically two options. One says that our body (our arms, legs, organs, etc.) is just a transport mechanism for our brain. Our arms and legs are just there to move our brain from place to place and help it do things like eat. In addition, things like our personality, our thoughts and feelings (one might say, our sense of self), are things that reside solely in our heads. In this view, the flesh and blood parts of us (our bodies) are irrelevant. The totality of who we are resides in the grey matter inside our skull.

The other option says that brain and body are inseparable and have to be thought of together as a unit. From this viewpoint, a disembodied brain is something other than human. The brain affects the body and the body affects the brain. They work in concert and one can’t prioritize one over the other.

But what does all of this have to do with singleness and sexuality?

As I stated at the top of this post, for Nelson, the dualistic view (that sees the mind and body as separate entities) tends to lead to either a denial of or overenthusiastic indulgence in one’s sexuality⁴ because the body is either something inherently sinful that needs to be controlled by the mind or the body is simply a vehicle for bringing pleasure to the mind. Nelson refers to the sexual component of this dualism as body alienation.

The alienated body produces a mind detached from the depth of feelings. It becomes narrow and controlling, machine-like in observation and calculation… If the mind is alienated from the body, so also is the body from the mind. The depersonalization of one’s sexuality, in some form or degree, inevitably follows. The body becomes a physical object possessed and used by the self.⁵

In other words, a person alienated from their body thinks that through the force of sheer mental will, they can make the body do its bidding, whether that be denying its desires or freely fulfilling them. But regardless of which way they go, they don’t view their choice as being a wholly bodily-integrated experience. For Nelson, persons like this are, at best, missing out on the depths of what a fully embodied interaction with the world can bring. At worst, this body alienation can lead to lives infused with shame, guilt, and denial for the ascetic and shallow, meaningless indulgence for the libertine.

As a remedy for this body alienation, Nelson proposes what he calls “sexual salvation,”⁶ something I’ll discuss in depth in my next post.

[POSTSCRIPT]

I realize that I’m leaving you all hanging with that tantalizing phrase, “sexual salvation,” but in today’s frenetic world, anticipation is unfortunately underrated (and a part of practicing desire).

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¹Clayton Sullivan, Rescuing Sex From the Christians (New York, NY: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006), 88-90.

²James B. Nelson, Embodiment: An Approach to Sexuality and Christian Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Ausburg Publishing House, 1978), 40.

³Ibid., 37.

⁴There is a third option, which is to say that sex “is an irrational, impersonal force which threatens to turn even the best of us into caricatures of ourselves. Odd and laughable, sexuality becomes almost inconsequential.” Ibid., 71.

⁵Ibid., 39.

⁶Ibid., 70.

Tags: dualism, embodiment, sexual salvation

• August 11, 2013
• Best Practices
• 6 Comments