BODILESS PERSONHOOD: DO YOU WEAR AN EARTHSUIT?
I consider the late Kenneth Hagin Sr. to be the greatest “systematic theologian” of the “Word of Faith" tradition, even if he probably wouldn’t describe himself that way. For those who don’t know what the word of faith movement is, here is Wikipedia’s definition:
Word of Faith (also known as Word-Faith or simply Faith) is a worldwide Evangelical Christian movement which teaches that Christians can access the power of faith or fear through speech. Its teachings are found on radio, the internet, television, and in many Charismatic denominations and communities. The doctrine renounces poverty, physical suffering, and defeat as necessary to a godly life and glorifying Jesus Christ. It teaches that the salvation won by Jesus on the cross included health and prosperity for believers; this is derived from its definition of the word sozo (salvation)
Evangelist E.W. Kenyon (1867–1948) is usually cited as the originator of Word of Faith teaching. Kenyon's writings influenced Kenneth Hagin Sr., the recognized "father" of the Word of Faith movement. Hagin (1917–2003) believed that it is God's will that believers enjoy good health, financial success, and a blessed life.
Of course not every church in this stream is the same, some appropriate this teaching more than others, and they are not organized the way the Roman Catholic Church or even other protestant traditions are, it is simply a movement, a huge movement. Some (particularly fellow Protestants) label them heretical, and while I agree with some of their observations, they still have very little in the way of a moral high ground since there are hardline Roman Catholics or Eastern Orthodox who say the same of us. I do agree that some of their teaching does seem heretical, but that doesn’t mean I dismiss their experiences or faith as invalid, the past one year with many of them has taught me that at least. Now onto the subject of this post.
One mainstay of this tradition is the statement “You are a spirit, you have a soul, you live in a body”. You can find this idea in his book “Man on Three Dimensions”, as well as in his other books, and apart from his, it appears in Kenyon’s, and a lot of other word of faith preachers. This understanding is influenced by verses such as Hebrews 4:12 and 1 Thessalonians 5:23. However you interpret these passages, there is a particular problem with preaching this: It completely sidesteps the inherent embodiment of man, and calls into question the creation of the body in the first place. Of course I know people like Hagin Sr. believed in the resurrection of the body, but this is a grave weakness in their theology (Many of them wouldn’t call it theology, but that is what it is, a way of talking about God and his acts in relation to us: Theology). This hard line between the objects intelligible to the senses and those intelligible to faith is a consistent feature of their teachings, most notably in their somewhat strict demarcation between “head” or “sense” knowledge and “revelation” knowledge (Whose contradictions I will get to in another post). But to get to the point, here’s a Translation of the Nicene Creed:
Who for us humanity and for our salvation came down from heaven, was incarnate, was made human, was born perfectly of the holy virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit. By whom He took body, soul, and mind, and everything that is in man, truly and not in semblance.
Text in Armenian, with transliteration and English translation.
“Everything that is truly man” includes body, which is not simply a “suit” we put on for our earthly pilgrimage, but a part of our person, no less the “true man” than his “spirit” or “soul”. Man is a unity, a child of “Heaven and earth” as Genesis 2 says in its opening statements. Only in this way are we a temple, which is a union of heaven and earth. Now, I’m sure Word of faith believers know this, my point here is that this historic Christian understanding of an embodied humanity is incompatible with the statement “man is a spirit, has a soul, and lives in a body” and they should realize harmonizing the two understandings will yield strange chimeras and should be jettisoned.