Colossians 1:15-23, Part 8

As for the nature of created things, again, we refer to the general manners in which they exist. Scripture teaches that God created persons and objects, mind and matter, spirits and bodies, things in heaven and things on earth, the invisible and the visible. From one perspective, these are various ways to distinguish the spiritual and the physical.

Thus when it comes to this question of the nature of created things, the Bible teaches a dualism. Here the word is used in a different sense than before, when we were discussing the sovereignty of God and the order of the eternal decrees. In the context of metaphysical causation, dualism refers to at least two supreme powers that create and sustain the objects and operations in the universe. This is the heresy that results from the attempt to metaphysically distance God from the creation and continuation of evil.

However, when it comes to the nature of created things, we are using the same word to refer to a different distinction, namely, that the universe consists of spiritual and material objects. Some objects possess both a spiritual aspect and a material aspect. For example, the Bible presents man as a spirit and a body. But here it also teaches a dualism – that is, the spirit is the man, who lives in a body. We may neutralize the rhetoric of objectors by absorbing their pejorative phrase – man is indeed "a ghost in a machine."

One trend in theology denies that man is essentially a duality, but claims that Scripture insists that man is a unity. Their use of the biblical evidence is misleading. Of course it is appropriate to refer to both the spirit and the body together as "man," as a unity, in ordinary discourse, when the topic is not about the nature of man. The question is whether the Bible makes the distinction when it addresses the topic, or when the truth about the topic must be assumed as it addresses something else. And we find that it consistently makes such a distinction, so that a disembodied person is still the same person, but the corpse of that person is not the person.

It is sometimes alleged that dualism is the "Greek" view of man, at times adding that such a view is anti-biblical because it assumes that matter is essentially evil. Such an objection is foolish and unproductive. I could not care less about what the Greek view is; rather, does or does not the Bible teach dualism when it comes to the nature of man, and that a person retains his personhood without his body? Since it does, and assumes this everywhere, our conclusion is that if this is the "Greek" view, then the Greeks were more biblical than these Christians who deny this position.

Also, one can hold to this position without thinking that matter is essentially evil. Just because matter is not evil in itself does not mean that it has to be a necessary part of a human person. These are two separate issues. There is no conflict between dualism and the biblical teachings that the deeds of the body are morally significant, that the bodies of believers form the temple of the Holy Spirit, and that there is a future physical resurrection, in which our bodies will be raised and changed. All these doctrines can be affirmed without also affirming that the body is an essential part of the human person.

The biblical doctrine of creation entails the creation of spirit and matter, and that not from preexisting substances, but by the bare power of God. All of creation – anything that exists that is not God – was conceived by divine intelligence and generated by divine ability. These propositions carry obvious implications for theology, philosophy, and science. Any theory of reality must be false that denies the spiritual world or the distinction between spirit and matter. Any method of investigation begs the question that begins from the assumption that the universe consists of matter alone. And since matter was created by God, material objects were not evolved from matter that already existed.