Man is a bipartite being. The materialist’s mistake is to reject the incorporeal reality of man and view man only as a bio-chemical machine. Man has a brain, but no mind. Man has a heart, but no soul. Man secretes thought the way liver secretes bile. This is the error that Christians have fought for over two centuries now, but there is another error they must consider.
This other error also implicitly denies man’s bipartite being but this denial is the opposite error of the materialists. This error is the mistake of the Gnostic and it is comprised of the error of denying man’s corporeality. This error views man only as the sum of this abstract thinking as if man’s corporeal embodiment is unaffected by his bio-chemical reality.
If the error of the materialist is to deny man’s incorporeal reality and the effect it has man’s material being, thus seeing man as all enzymes, proteins, and the firing of synapses, the error of the gnostic is to deny man’s corporeal reality and the effect that his corporeal reality has upon man’s spiritual being, thus seeing man as all thought, contemplation, and ethereal spirituality.
But man is a bipartite being and who God has made him to be in his corporeal reality impinges upon and colors the manifestation of the incorporeal, just as the incorporeal reality impinges upon and colors the manifestation of the corporeal.
If God has made the corporeal nature of men to be distinct, though all sharing the imago dei, then it should not be surprising to find that as distinct tribes, tongues, and nations are, by grace visited w/ redemption, that spiritual reality of redemption, as poured over the distinctions of corporeality that God has created — and made good — will find itself being colored and shaped by those God given corporeal distinctions — just as redemption will color and shape man’s corporeal realities.
It seems the only alternative to this is to suggest that God has made men all the same and that it is only sin that makes us to differ. Such a view would suggest that man’s corporeality is mute once He is visited by grace, thus suggesting that man’s corporeality is really inconsequential once he has been visited with regeneration. This view would seem to deny our bipartite being. Remember here, when we are renewed it is our sin nature that is put off — not our human-ness.
Further such a view that does not allow for diversity among those who share the Imago Dei would seem to suggest that the result of grace is an expected sameness in the renewed-humanity. Is it really the case that the new man in Christ is a new man completely stripped of his distinct human-ness , or as more likely is the case, is it that the new man is new precisely because all that comprised his human-ness is now bent in a God-ward direction?