One of the main themes of Evangel’s early days was evangelicals’ complex relationship to culture.

I recently came across Evangel contributor Dr. Russell Moore’s astute analysis on the question from 2007 in the pages of Touchstone, the other ecumenical magazine of record.

Dr. Moore’s piece really needs to be read in its entirety, as he manages to thoughtfully engage the question without degenerating into overreaction or hyperbole.  He is in favor of evangelical ‘engagement’ with culture, but cognizant of its limitations.

But what struck me was this bit near the end:

Often at the root of so much Christian “engagement” with pop culture lies an embarrassment about the oddity of the gospel. Even Christians feel that other people won’t resonate with this strange biblical world of talking snakes, parting seas, floating axe-heads, virgin conceptions, and emptied graves. It is easier to meet them “where they’re at,” by putting in a Gospel According to Andy Griffith DVD (for the less hip among us) or by growing a soul-patch and quoting Coldplay at the fair-trade coffeehouse (for the more hip among us).

Knowing Andy Griffith episodes or Coldplay lyrics might be important avenues for talking about kingdom matters, but let’s not kid ourselves. We connect with sinners in the same way Christians always have: by telling an awfully freakish-sounding story about a man who was dead, and isn’t anymore, but whom we’ll all meet face-to-face in judgment.

This is a crucial point, and similar to one I made while speaking to a group of homeschoolers.  I argued that their unique experience as homeschoolers–a sometimes derided and disenfranchised population–would better prepare them for being comfortable in the discomfort that can come with believing and proclaiming the remarkable and surprising fact of the Gospel.

But for those of us who work in the church, Christian universities, or Christian non-profits, we tend to lose sight not only of the ‘freakishly bizarre’ nature of the Gospel, but also the weird nature of the lives that bear witness to it.  I will never forget my first job as a mature believer in a secular environment, which was the first dominantly secular environment I had been in for a sustained amount of time since high school.  There was simply no avoiding the reality:  I felt, and was, odd.  I didn’t live with my wife prior to marriage, I took religious holidays with the utmost seriousness, I was engaged in prayer and attempting to cultivate a meditative, thoughtful life….none of which fit well in my overwhelmingly unChristian environment.  While not the Gospel per se, these behaviors are an outgrowth of it, and fit no better into most people’s framework than the reality that grounds them.

But attempting to build bridges also fell woefully short.  Conversations about movies, music, and other cultural artifacts rarely proceed for most people beyond judgments of taste and emotional responses.  They don’t lead to the sort of conversation that Paul had with a bunch of trained philosophers on Mars Hill.

But we are not without hope.  The most meaningful tools we have to ‘build bridges’ are not the shared experiences of, music, or the news, but rather questions about family, frustrations, and the various dynamic that make up those aspects of our lives that extend beyond our entertainment choices.  They are a listening ear, and a keen attention to discern the deeper dynamics of the heart that are always bubbling to the surface.  We build bridges by cultivating a heart that listens to the movements of the Spirit in our own lives, and the lives of others.

And, as Dr. Moore points out, we build bridges most of all by talking honestly and candidly about the content of our faith, a faith which still has the power to command attention and inspire curiosity.

Note:  I cross-posted this over at Evangel.  I was going to offer new thoughts tonight, but am simply feeling too sad to write after the Colts got walloped (even though, oddly, I didn’t watch the game).  So, enjoy.

Like Matt Milliner, I’m impressed by David Schaengold’s post over at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen, wherein he relates observation decks, science, and the joy of observation:

Being happy merely to see and to understand, as scientists are, is the feeling responsible for observation decks, whose most intellectually incurious and aesthetically stolid visitors thrill with joy as they marvel at the works of Man and discover how familiar neighborhoods tessellate. Though surmise about the psychology of ages past is hazardous, I’ll venture to guess that the civilization of the modern West has privileged and encouraged joy in the way the universe works more than any civilization in history.

Schaengold’s point is well made, which is why I find his criticism of medieval science unfortunate and unnecessary:

Nothing like the scientific method was found in antiquity, and what glimmers of it appeared in the Middle Ages were feeble. The systematic use of the method, institutionalized in journals and laboratories, is characteristically modern, but the psychology of the scientists who employ it represents a Christian ideal.

There are, of course, some differences between the moderns and the medievals with respect to science.  But Schaengold’s dismissal of the medieval understanding of the scientific method as “pretty feeble” is an injustice to the work that went on during that period  Most famously, the work of Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon were using experiments to do remarkable work in optics (motivated as they might have been by the medieval emphasis on the notion that God is light), and in the case of Bacon advocating for something that very closely resembles the contemporary “scientific method.”

In fact, while the relationship between the medievals and the moderns with respect to science was contentious in the 20th century, the bulk of scholarly opinion seems to have moved toward thinking that the scientific revolution wasn’t a revolution at all, but rather a modification of what they inherited from the medievals.

Consider the judgment of David Lindberg, a leading historians of medieval science, on the matter:  ”The underlying source of revolutionary novelty in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries…was metaphysical and cosmological, not methodological.”  Lindberg’s work even challenges Schaengold’s claim that “nothing like a scientific method was found in antiquity,” at least if we’re discussing the actual practices of experimentation and not its rhetoric.  In fact, his entire chapter really is worth reading.

One way of telling the story of science in the late-modern period, then, is that these metaphysical changes eventually dislocate science from its proper position in our understanding of the world and (ironically) begin to impinge upon the scientific method itself by calling into question the rational basis of the universe.  But that moves toward the source problem of (as Schaengold aptly puts it) the alienation of man from himself in the late modern world.

All that aside, Schaengold’s basic point about the joy of observation is well made, and clearly a point of contact between the later modern scientists and their medieval forerunners.  While I doubt Schaengold’s point that our modern period empahsizes that joy more than any period before, I for one am glad that Schaengold has found it, and even more glad that he is intent on spreading it.

Heather MacDonald’s latest piece at National Review explores some of the questions surrounding gay marriage, and the difficulties that arise when parental status and identity is established solely by intent, rather than by biology–as it is in the case of homosexual marriage.

The question, of course, that MacDonald has to answer is why this separation matters at all.  She answers:

The institutionalized severing of biology from parenthood affirms a growing trend in our society, that of men abandoning their biological children. Too many men now act like sperm donors: they conceive a children then largely disappear, becoming at best intermittent presences in their children’s lives.

If parental status is a matter of intent, however, not of genes, absent fathers can say: “I never intended to take on the role of that child’s parent; therefore I’m not morally bound to act as a parent.”

The separation of biology and parenthood, then, has two problematic effects:  on the one hand, it undercuts the argument that fathers have obligations to any offspring they do not conceive intentionally, further perpetuating the social problems absenteeism has caused.  On the other hand, it undercuts the complementarity that men and women have in raising children, a complementarity that MacDonald thinks can be established even at a biological level.

MacDonald realizes the muted force of her argument, as she hedges her position on the final page. But it is still an interesting line of thought.

And if it’s right, it might have significant repercussions for younger evangelicals who want to claim that they are pro-life while still allowing homosexual marriage.  The force of MacDonald’s piece is that she establishes a link between the technological subordination of procreation (as expressed through making procreation only valid when it is intentional) with marriage practices, arguing that, “The primary challenge to traditional notions of parenthood comes from gay conception, not gay marriage.”

The first line of argument indicates that intention alone is not the sole criterion for parenthood, a position that the pro-life community has vigorously asserted and that homosexual child-rearing has to deny. This, however, might call the coherence of simultaneously being pro-life and pro-gay marriage into question.

I say “might” because McDonald’s line of argument might also cause problems for the adoption movement, which also establishes child-rearing on a non-biological basis.  But even on that front, it’s not clear that encouraging adoption and including adoptive children as regular, normal children on the same level as biological ones makes adoption normative in the way biological children might be.  And it preserves (in most cases) the biological complementarity of a mother and father.

MacDonald’s piece is by no means conclusive, but it does move one up some important lines of inquiry that are worth reflecting on.  At the least, it offers up a few more questions for proponents of gay marriage and explains the cautiousness of social conservatives to give weigh to libertarian ideals.

I’ve watched this trailer three times now, and I just can’t quit.

HT:  Josh Trevino

The Oscar nominations came out Tuesday morning. Pixar’s Up already won the Golden Globe for Best Animated Film. It shouldn’t have. The movie is on par with Pixar’s others, which of course means it is very good: characteristically inventive, incisive, and attractive. But Up was not the best animated film of 2009. The best animated film of 2009 was Fantastic Mr. Fox. We can hope the Academy recognizes this fact in March.

Fox was directed by auteur Wes Anderson, the patron filmmaker of young white aesthetes everywhere. His other movies (Rushmore, The Royal Tenebaums, The Life Aquatic) feature manicured sets populated by Bill Murray and a rotation of clever narcissistic oddballs, often posing in slow motion to the beat of the British Invasion hits. The standard critiques can be found here and here. You either love it or you hate it.

With Fantastic Mr. Fox, which was created using stop-motion animation, Anderson’s talents are nearly perfectly utilized. In his usual movies, Anderson’s obsessive visual style can make the characters feel very arranged, like they know we know this is a movie, and they must pause for effect before saying this so-ironic-it’s-not-ironic-line—now! In Fox Anderson’s creativity is given more natural expression, as every single detail, puppets included, responds to his little artistic fingers. By making the visual material less representational (this does not mean fake—compared to Up the 18-inch puppets nearly beg you to pet their little twee outfits and fur) the occasional dramatic dialogue is refreshingly resonate. When Mrs. Fox tells Mr. Fox “I love you, but I shouldn’t have married you,” the sentiment feels more human than most in Anderson’s other movies.

Saying this usually induces eye rolling, but the movie really is worth catching in the theater. Anderson has said he plans on filming humans in his next project but does not rule out attempting another film in stop-motion. We can hope this happens. In the mean time, if you’ve already seen the movie or want just a sample before committing an evening, watch this animated acceptance speech Anderson created for the recent National Board of Review.

The report that Mark Sanford didn’t want to include a vow of fidelity in their wedding vows is the least surprising, and the saddest, news I have heard in a while.

According to his wife, the discredited governor of South Carolina whose liaisons with  an Argentinian woman last summer were a national scandal was worried about his ability to keep such a commitment.  His premonition, unfortunately, came to pass in an unseemly and destructive way.

It is tempting in such situations to become cynical about marriage, and its prospects.  Sandra-Tsing Loh took that route after her own failed marriage, while Caitlin Flanagan weakly tried to avoid it.

I offered my own take on marriage and divorce in the latest issue of The City.  This was my final paragraph (though you should read the whole thing):

This is why Mark Sanford and the Gosselins matter. As Caitlin Flanagan points out, they reinforce our common cynical disposition toward marriage. But in doing so, they also reinforce that marriage still matters. This is the territory of subversive truth: it is precisely the threat of infidelity and betrayal that provides so much drama in modern marriage. The covenant could really be broken, a man’s word could come to nothing. And when it does among our society’s most visible members, we collectively identify with their moral weaknesses and justify our own failures and shortcomings. But only within a world steeped in marriage is that sort of cynicism possible—a world that doesn’t care would have ignored Jon and Kate altogether.

When I wrote the article, I had no idea the next scandal that would capture our attention would be Tiger’s.  But that had its own unique dynamic, in that Tiger was a manufactured man from beginning to end, which only heightened our fascination with his undoing.

But we’ve reached a point where the obvious needs saying, and repeating:  a lack of interest in vowing to remain faithful isn’t a “moment of self-doubt” or cold-feet.  It signifies a lack of courage and a gross misunderstanding of marriage itself.  The whole thing hangs on the very vow that Sanford wanted to cut out.

The stream of public figures ending their marriages is never ending, and neither is the threat of cynicism about marriage. Defending the glory and romance of marriage is a battle that requires vigilant repetition.  I hope to play a tiny part in that fight.

Son of God. Prince of Peace. Son of Man. Cagefighter? While the first three masculine titles given to our Lord Jesus are biblical and sufficient enough to express the wonder of Jesus, the last title seems to be ever-more increasingly projected onto Jesus by evangelical churches which have long struggled with the over-feminization of the church. Any brief inspection of some of evangelicalism’s top blogs seem to tout Mixed Martial Arts as the next great out-reach strategy for men. Forget Promise-Keepers, let’s have a fist, iron, and blood.

On the Sojourners blog, a blog I disagree with 99% politically and theologically, Eugene Cho draws our attention to an article written in the New York Times over the growing popularity of MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) or more commonly known as Ultimate Fighting Championship and various other leagues. Like myself, he condemns the sport.

Now, permit me to speak on this topic. In a former life, I was a proud and militant pacifist. I would have argued that to equate Jesus with any type of struggle or legitimating of defense would have been heretical. I was wrong. And so is this position casting Jesus into a male-affirming machismo injecting repressed masculinity with capricious sport.

It has been suggested that evangelical male fascination with cagefighting is simply allowing men to tap into their inner masculinity and thus celebrated as a recovery of biblical manhood. While gender distinction and masculinity are to be applauded and upheld as biblical statutes, current attitudes amongst evangelical men suggest that men have taken their divine mandate to protect and twisted it into a carnality salivating with brutality. Cagefighting and warring are not synonymous. Cagefighting is sport, drawing upon the unbridled angst of man which seeks to overwhelm his opponent through unhealthy submission (or unconsciousness). Warring is the act of protection and defense and entails, in its proper execution, honor and restraint.

Jesus was fully man and fully God. The Chalcedonian definition is two natures, one person. Let that be sufficient in all its simplicities and complexities. To propose, as one very popular evangelical preacher has done, that he could not worship a Jesus he could beat up is pure nonsense. The vision of Jesus presented as a warrior in Revelation is not sufficient evidence to base one’s desire for a combative life. Yes, Jesus was no doubt a rugged man well acquainted with the difficulties of nomadic life, but this same individual wept (John 11:35). Jesus never waged malevolent war over the grounds of blood-lust with earthly enemies; instead, he rose to challenge and combat far superior Powers which rage against each of us in constant tumult to devour (1 Peter 5:8). This enemy, interestingly, is not of flesh (Ephesians 6:12).

Am I making too much of this sport? Perhaps. But, I cannot understand the virtue of a sport which images the graphic and brutal aspects of human behavior.

No doubt many of our readers are very familiar with all the quotable (and some unquotable) C. S. Lewis, so they should not be surprised to be reminded that the eminently understandable academician said, “The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books.” Our own intellectual blind spots can be uncovered by availing ourselves of the perspectives of the living and the dead.

This is one reason I’ve been reading Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine on poli-sci. Every time CNN or Fox News makes a claim about politics they both operate with certain assumptions that quietly unite them against the ideas of past and future ages; in order to uncover those assumptions and critically assess them we must compare the general outlines of our thought to those who held very different opinions.

Augustine’s City of God against the Pagans is a massive compilation of twenty-two volumes attempting to shift the Roman empire’s cyclical and pagan interpretation of history and government to a linear interpretation based upon the Christian theology and anthropology. While the tome addresses much more than political science issues, it lays a foundation for centuries of later political thought.

Among the major concepts that form this foundation is Augustine’s formulation of the summum bonum or Supreme Good, (more…)

A recent article by Fuller Seminary president Richard Mouw has once again awakened the curious and troublesome topic of Christian political ethics. Without summarizing the entire article, I think it important to address the talking points Mouw takes up.

In the article, Mouw reflects, how after many years, evangelical dean Carl Henry was right given his approach to Christian political ethics. In an essay submitted to Christianity Today in 1967, Mouw puts forward the thesis that political pronouncements ought to be put forward under the auspices of the Church; that is, it is the Church making political pronouncements and not merely individual Christians (though, to be honest, this raises further questions on the possibility of there ever being a Protestant consensus on political issues).

Henry disagrees in the reverse. In his own axioms of political engagement (see below), Henry argues that evangelical political pronouncements can largely be done, in my own phrasing, by “negation.” According to Henry, the Church is incapable and lacks the authority to make informed and positive public policy recommendations. Instead, the Church is “declare the criteria by which nations will ultimately be judged, and the divine standards to which man and society must conform if civilization is to endure” (see axiom #3). Not only is the church incapable, according to Henry, but the task itself lies outside the realm of the church’s main stated objective, primarily being evangelization.

For now, here are Henry’s axioms:

1. The Bible is critically relevant to the whole of modern life and culture—the social-political arena included.

2. The institutional church has no mandate, jurisdiction, or competence to endorse political legislation or military tactics or economic specifics in the name of Christ.

3. The institutional church is divinely obliged to proclaim God’s entire revelation, including the standards or commandments by which men and nations are to be finally judged, and by which they ought now to live and maintain social stability.

4. The political achievement of a better society is the task of all citizens, and individual Christians ought to be politically engaged to the limit of their competence and opportunity.

5. The Bible limits the proper activity of both government and church for divinely stipulated objectives—the former, for the preservation of justice and order, and the latter, for the moral-spiritual task of evangelizing the earth.

It is axiom #2 which raises the questions of whether Christians—and the Church—can offer positive policy pronouncements.

Enter Kuyper, who, according to Mouw, offers the mediating position between himself and Henry. Though Kuyper would have agreed with the limits of the Church’s political pronouncements, Kuyper’s thought, echoing Catholic Social Teaching, claims the Protestant equivalent of Mediating Structures—“Kuyper would have insisted that, between the gathered church and individual Christians going out into the world to struggle with applications to specifics, there is an important intermediate area of activity. Christians must form a variety of organizations that focus on specific areas of cultural involvement, in order to engage in the kind of communal reflection necessary to develop a Christian mind for the area in question. This means that it is important, say, for Christians who are deeply involved in policies and practices relating to concern for the poor to develop specific proposals building on the general principles proclaimed by that church, by deliberating on these matters in groups that have the expertise to struggle with them. And it is even appropriate to present those policy proposals as Christian-inspired specifics, even if they move well beyond what the church—as church—has a right to say.”

As one who is constantly oscillating between these two positions, I must agree with Mouw that Henry is right on this issue. Theology, it’s limits, and history have vindicated Henry.

I would love feedback from the readers of Mere Orthodoxy on this topic. What do you think? Is it better for Christians to work individually to impact our political culture, or should the Church work institutionally to advance particular agendas and candidates?

Every theologian, wanna-be theologian, a-theologian, and otherwise thinking person has one.

Discuss a point of theology long enough, and you’ll inevitably see it played.  Call it Anderson’s Law:  as a theological conversation grows longer, the probability of seeing the mystery card approaches one.

You’ll learn to see it coming.  The shoulders shrug just a little, a sympathetic smile starts slowly forms, slow-motion starts as the words hit you:  ”Well, some things are a mystery…”

This is a dangerous card for the theologian to play, as it functions as a bit of a trump card.  Play it too early, and you short-circuit the difficult process of coming to a more robust understanding of the subject of inquiry.  Don’t ever play it, and end up like Chesterton’s lunatic who tries to get the heavens into his head, only to have his head split.

With that said, here are a few of theological and a-theological frameworks  and the distinct places where the mystery card gets played:

• Calvinists:  the existence of human responsibility
• Arminians: the existence of divine sovereignty over salvation
• Roman Catholics: the simultaneous presence of Christ’ body in the Eucharist and in Heaven
• Anglo-Catholics: their relationship to the Reformation
• Naturalists: consciousness and the existence of free will
• Eastern Orthodox: I’m pretty sure this is the only card they play with.
• Lutherans: how (and that!) sanctification happens
• Weslyans: why sanctification doesn’t happen
• Baptists: the working of the Holy Spirit
• Pentacostals: the working of anything else
• Dispensationalists: the Old Testament

Yes, the list is a bit of a joke.  But it’s a joke to tease out the difficulty of knowing where to place our mysteries, and how many we should admit.

But seriousness aside, this is a game we can all play.  Add mystery cards in the comments and I’ll update the post accordingly.  Bonus points for picking on your own tradition(s).

It’s been a productive month here at Mere-O, and our largest month ever in terms of traffic (thanks!).

We’re grateful for all the new readers we have, and for all the comments and feedback.  Even when I can’t respond as quickly as I’d like, I read every comment.

In case you missed it, here were the ten most popular posts this month in terms of traffic:

1. Body Matters:  A New Book by….Me
2. Deep Church:  Under Review
3. The Discipline of Listening to Sermons
4. Whither Wheaton:  Debating the Flagship’s Next Captain
5. Desiring the Kingdom:  A Review
6. Industrial Sex:  Freeing the Body from its Consequences
7. The Unintelligible Body:  Chomsky on Galileo and Newton
8. Truth Comes in a Body:   Andy Crouch on the Incarnation
9. Neither Beast Nor God:  Gilbert Meilander on Personal Dignity
10. Education for Human Flourishing:  A Review

Also, don’t miss our project to actually read Descartes.  You may never have an opportunity like it again (at least until we get crazy and decide to do it with a different book!).  And don’t forget to sign up for Mere-O Monthly.

To mark the occasion—for some a highly anticipated (and caloric) event, and for some, more forgettable—why not bring Christian reflection to the Super Bowl?

The Internet, blogosphere, and news networks are abuzz with the current Tim Tebow Abortion Commercial Controversy—coming soon to a TV near you.

While I will refrain from the multiple canvasses upon which this debate has been forged, I do want to draw attention to the obvious: While no doubt pro-choice advocates are effused with frustration at CBS’s allowance of the commercial produced by Focus on the Family, the pro-choice movement is framing their frustrations in an exceedingly loathsome way, even to such a degree that they are exposing the fallaciousness and hideousness of their position as vehemently anti-life. Here is where the argument opens up and allows the pro-life movement remarkable potential to gain positive capital.

To the chagrin of the pro-life movement, we’ve often allowed our opponents on this issue to define the terms of the debate and as a result, we’ve never really felt compelled to draw attention to the obvious: Yes, we as pro-life individuals are for life, but we’ve never wanted to identify pro-choice individuals as for death. Now, lest I be interpreted as comparing every pro-choice individual to Hitler, I believe that the protestation over this commercial waged by the pro-choice community reduces to such. If anyone is doing the labeling, it’s self-ascribed this time. Careless presentation, presently exhibited, often merits unfortunate consequences. As even the New York Times concluded, “the would-be censors are on the wrong track. Instead of trying to silence an opponent, advocates for allowing women to make their own decisions about whether to have a child should be using the Super Bowl spotlight to convey what their movement is all about: protecting the right of women like Pam Tebow to make their private reproductive choices.”

The manner and attitude of their response is only fueling the positive aspects of the pro-life movement. Does anyone want to be seen actively working against the family and proposing, as renowned Hollywood feminist and bloviator Joy Behar did, that Tim Tebow could easily have been a pedophile just as much as he is a Heisman trophy winner and all-around good guy? Pro-choice individuals need to ask the perilous and self-indicting question of how their protests are being interpreted. To me, this particular argument has been interpreted as Kevorkian libertinism.

The lesson: Choose carefully how you argue and grant, however sacrosanct the issue is, that life is good and to be encouraged. In the absence of this axiom, the pro-choice movement’s frustration is tantamount to their own demise.

[I would like to thank Matt Anderson for allowing me to write for Mere Orthodoxy. In time, he'll joined the enlightened readership of National Review.]

I’m generally sympathetic to Robert Gundry’s helpful explication of the role of the body in Biblical theology.  His careful exegetical work foreshadowed John Cooper’s conclusions in Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting:  the anthropology of Scripture points toward something like a substance-dualism, even if it’s not the strong dualism of Plato.

But along the way, Gundry offers this odd argument in defense of dualism:

What in the constitution of man requires God to be there with man? But in that man exists as a unity of two substances, spirit and body, he requires the cohesive force of God for true and full being. Kasemann has seen that there is no way to bind a substantival body and a substantial soul together except by mythological speculation.  For mythological speculation, we might prefer God. But the point is the same. A dichotomous distinction within man requires a cohesive force from the outside. And pace Kasemann, that is good, for it fuses anthropology and theology. Insofar as theology and anthropology dovetail in this manner, then, our view of man receives confirmation.

But within the framework of Christian theology, the continuing existence of any creature requires the subterranean affirmation by God of their being.  The internal unity of the angelic form could be undone at any moment, as its being is as contingent as the being of humans.  Positing God as the only explanation for a particular feature of human existence is no more interesting or illuminating than positing God as the only explanation for existence at all.

What’s more, Gundry’s position actually cuts against the efforts to identify ways in which the soul and body might interact, a problematic feature of all such “God of the gaps” arguments.  On such an account, the difficulty of explanation of the relationship turns (magically!) from a virtue into a vice.

In his defense, Gundry is affirming Ernst Kasemann’s argument, and Kasemann is specifically concerned with undoing Rudolph Bultmann’s overly anthropological interpretation of Paul, a reading that problematically minimized God’s involvement with humans.  But solving one error with another is never a good strategy, as Kasemann does here.

I think Gundry’s explication of the role and meaning of the body in Scripture is generally correct, but this argument is hardly his finest moment.