The Digital Assault on the Body
Understanding the new Gnosticism
A few years ago, when I was just beginning to think about issues related to digital engagement, I came across the story of a pastor who had begun a church in virtual reality. I soon discovered a viral video of him baptizing an anime girl in VR. In the video, he explained part of his rationale behind this new venture: “Your relationships (in VR) can be more authentic because there’s a sense of anonymity that we have and with that anonymity comes authenticity…” he said. “There’s no judgement — race, color, weight… We’re just human beings talking with each other. We’re spirit to spirit, mind to mind…”
While the desire to reach disenfranchised individuals—the skeptics, the sick, those with various disabilities who might not otherwise show up on a Sunday morning—is consistent with the gospel, I immediately recognized that there was something deeply wrong about his views of church, the gospel, and the body.
In recent days, there has been a neo-Gnostic resurgence that is in many ways a direct byproduct of the digital revolution. According to this neo-Gnostic understanding, the body and the person are two separate and distinct entities. The person—consisting of one’s soul, mind, heart—carries direct authority over the body, which is reduced to mere matter, a container or shell for the person. The body, along with the rest of the material world, is relegated to the lesser level of scientific fact that bears no influence upon the soul. The person, which is distinct from the body, is thus granted leave to manipulate the body however he or she likes for the sake of self-actualization.
Neo-Gnostic reasoning would compel us to overlook any message that might be intrinsic to a medium of technology. In other words, while we might be up in arms about the violence in video games, we are less inclined to scrutinize what values video games as a medium of communication might condition us to hold. We view our mediums of technology much like we understand our bodies and the rest of the natural world: as having no formational capacity or intrinsic value apart from the utility they serve our persons. In fact, mediums of technology, especially digital ones, are often elevated above the body because of the ways these enable the person to bypass one’s natural limitations.
Against this neo-Gnostic understanding, the Christian view of personhood holds that the body and soul make up an inextricable unity. While there are different theories of personhood within orthodox doctrine, what is not debated is the understanding that the body and the rest of the created world are intrinsically good and contain a telos that directs us back to God. The Scriptures are clear in their explanation that although the body and the rest of creation suffers the curse of sin and death, God’s plan of redemption involves making our physical world new again. It would take only a rudimentary reading of the Gospels to recognize that the message of Jesus is not deliverance, healing, and salvation from the body but rather in the body.
Where the aforementioned pastor went wrong, many well-intentioned Christians today go wrong as well, often in less extreme ways: we do not scrutinize our mediums of technology for any message that might be intrinsic to them. When we treat all technologies as essentially the same, we risk undermining the gospel message by making light of perhaps what is most radical about it: that a transcendent God would choose to put on flesh so that he might be able to commune with us in the body.
I should be clear: there are certainly legitimate uses for our digital technologies, and often these tools are extremely beneficial for the sick and others who have certain kinds of disabilities. But in our digital engagement we must distinguish between therapeutic uses and enhancements. The President’s Council on Bioethics defined the two terms in this way:
“Therapy,” on this view as in common understanding, is the use of biotechnical power to treat individuals with known diseases, disabilities, or impairments, in an attempt to restore them to a normal state of health and fitness. “Enhancement,” by contrast, is the directed use of biotechnical power to alter, by direct intervention, not disease processes but the “normal” workings of the human body and psyche, to augment or improve their native capacities and performances.
Therapy is legitimate because it assumes that the body is good and the ailing body should be restored to its proper functioning. Enhancement, conversely, seeks to surpass the natural limitations of the body, even at full health, and so disdains the created order.
Big Tech and its champions often smuggle their devices into our ordinary lives by way of therapy. VR church might sound like an effective means of granting those who have special conditions opportunity to participate in the life of the church, but to therefore standardize VR for the sake of those few individuals risks undermining the embodied message of the gospel for the entire church. Furthermore, we must always remember that it would be better for those who are suffering such conditions to be healed in the body than for them to settle for any digital alternative. We should be careful not to communicate to those who are suffering in the body that their embodied experiences do not matter and that they are essentially only minds.
I am not unaware that any discussion of the body—be it about food or sexuality or disability—is a seriously sensitive issue for so many. But that is exactly why it is so important for the church today. The body is perhaps the most intimate aspect of our persons. The Christian life is not merely an assent to a few cognitive assertions, but a love embodied. It is just as the Scriptures say: “Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice” (Rom 12:1). If a husband was to merely say he loves his wife without giving himself to her in the body, his love would be received as superficial and false. Likewise, God wants intimacy with his people, but we in the Western church have withheld ourselves by not yielding our bodies to him. Many of the issues Americans face today concerning food, sexuality, and more are a consequence of our unwillingness to yield our bodies to God.[1]
What then is the way forward through this conundrum? Although we would be wise to limit and be more cautious about our tech engagement, we will need a more positive vision. In a word, we must renew our love for the body. But not our bodies first, but Christ’s body, since it is his body that grants us salvation. Our bodies, indeed, are mortal, sinful, broken, and insufficient in every conceivable measure to provide the healing, deliverance, and salvation that we so urgently need today. Jesus’ body, however, was the perfect sacrifice and is not bound by the same constraints as ours. His body, once crucified, rose again. His body can make us whole and give us hope not just for our souls, but for our own bodies as well.
[1] For more on this, see Nancy Pearcey’s book Love Thy Body. I am indebted to it for many of the ideas discussed in this essay.
THANK YOU for reminding me about Pearcey's Love Thy Body! I read it years ago. Loved it then, but would especially want to read it now. Knew as soon as I read the title that I'd need to read this article.