Good Sex: When Body and Soul Come Together
By Dan Scott

Shawna was frustrated with her husband, Larry.

“He treats sex like a drive-by shooting! Last week, when he finally wanted to have sex, I was glad. I thought, Wow—it’s about time! So I actually got quite worked up.

“I shouldn’t have bothered. It was all over before I knew what happened. He was like Julius Caesar: He saw, he came, and he conquered. When he had his orgasm, he kissed me on the cheek and was soon snoring away. I could have shot him!”

Her “drive-by assassin” had made a fundamental mistake; he had treated sex as a mere physical release. His wife needs much more.

Laura had the opposite problem. She had been ashamed to tell her husband, Boice, that she longed for some no-holds-barred, sweaty and very physical sex. One night, she suddenly let it all loose and started moaning and thrashing about. Boice sat up in the bed and yelled, “What are you doing!”

He then gave her a lecture about “controlling her carnality.” He married her, he said, because he thought she was interested in spiritual things. He had thought she would make an ideal wife and help him raise a good family.

“Hasn’t sex been all right as it is?” he asked. “Why do you want to ruin it by acting like a porn star?”

When she told me about their argument in their first session as a couple, she protested, “It’s not like that. I love our tender times. It’s just that I don’t think sex always has to be so weighty and deep. Sometimes I just want to let go and enjoy myself. Why is he trying to make me feel like a whore for just feeling sexual? It makes me not want to have sex with him at all.”

Believe it or not, these two couples’ sexual difficulties are related. They are rooted in the way the couples think about their souls and their bodies. That’s why, the more I came to know them, the more I realized they both needed a theology lesson.

Heresy Can Ruin Your Sex Life

We are incarnational creatures; that means we have both a body and a spirit. Our body and spirit are not separate components of our being. They are interdependent. What happens to our spirit affects our body, and what happens to our body affects our spirit.

By treating Shawna as though she were a mere body, Larry was guilty of “animalism,” or denying his wife’s spirit. By treating Laura as a mere spiritual being, Boice was guilty of “angelism,” or denying his wife’s physicality.

The great theologian Thomas Aquinas came up with his definitions of “animalism” and “angelism” as he reflected on one of Christianity’s central teachings: the doctrine of the incarnation, or the belief that God became a man. That doctrine leads to another one: the resurrection of the body. Christians confess both of these beliefs every time they recite the Apostle’s and the Nicene Creeds, the two great confessions of their faith.

Isn’t it amazing how we can hold inconsistent belief systems or confess one thing while actually living another. Many believers are doing precisely that where sexuality is concerned.

To believe that God became a man and that He now eternally inhabits a human body implies a high view of our physical life. Add to this the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, and we would think we could not possibly disdain our natural appetites.

So what gives? Why do so many Christians fail to cherish their bodies? I think it’s because we fail to correctly define the word “soul.”

A Prayer for the Bathroom

Many years ago I was asked to do my first house blessing.

When I got to the house, I reviewed the ceremony in the car with my wife. I read over the prayers for the entryway and the kitchen, the bedrooms and the garden with appreciation. However, I drew the line at the prayer for the bathroom.

“I refuse to pray over a toilet!” I said to my wife. “Only a bunch of crazy Anglicans would write a prayer for a bathroom!”

But for some reason, when we actually went through the ceremony, I found myself reading the bathroom prayer before I had a chance to think about it.

“O Holy God, in the incarnation of Your Son, our Lord, You made our flesh to be the instrument of Your self-revelation. Give us a proper respect and reverence for our mortal bodies, keeping them clean and fair, whole and sound; that, glorifying You in them, we may confidently await our being clothed with spiritual bodies, when that which is mortal is transformed by life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

As I read that prayer, I had an epiphany. God was interested in our mortal bodies! He wanted us to keep them clean and presentable. I had acted as if God were interested only in some invisible part of our being.

Not long afterward, I reread the first five books of the Bible. I was amazed to see how much God cared about food, cleanliness and appearance. Clearly, having a low view of our body was as incompatible with the Bible as having a low view of our spirit.

Larry needed to connect with his wife’s inner being because she is a spiritual creature. Boice needed to enjoy his wife’s body because she is a physical creature. Both Larry and Boice need a definition of “soul” that makes them aware that we are beings with both bodies and spirits.

If you ask someone to define the word “soul,” you will likely hear one of two answers. One answer is that the soul is an eternal but invisible substance that resides within the human body. A less common response will be that “soul” is another word for “the entire person.” The second answer implies that the body and its desires are part of our spiritual life; the first answer implies that the body is a hindrance to spiritual life.

Boice wants sex from time to time. However, because he fancies himself to be a spiritual man, he fears becoming carnal and bestial. He wants his sexual life to be upright, holy, safe, godly and spiritual. Laura, on the other hand, wants to experience her body—to abandon herself to physical sensation and delight. She wants incarnational sex.

The truth of the matter is that Laura scares Boice! He is so disconnected from his physical body that he had no idea what she was doing that night. He admitted to me later that he thought she might be possessed!

Obviously, Boice was raised to live as much as possible as if he had no body. He has been taught that this is the way to spiritual life. Imagine then how amazed he was when I told him that I thought his wife was much more spiritually mature than he was.

“Frankly,” I told him as tenderly as I could, “I think of you as a scared little boy, at least where sex is concerned.”

So did his wife. That’s why I had to find a way to get through to him.

He had thought of himself as a spiritual giant because he was so interested in his soul. Was he ever surprised when I told him that according to the Bible, what he called a “soul” didn’t even exist! Sexually speaking, he was more of a disciple of Plato than he was of Christ.

Both sexual addiction and sexual anorexia thrive among Christians because so many try to divorce their body from their soul. They fail to apply to their body and spirit the principle that the Lord Jesus applied to husbands and wives: “What God has joined together, let not man separate.”

Taken from: Naked and Not Ashamed. Copyright © 2008 by Dan Scott. Published by Harvest House Publishers, Eugene, OR. Used by permission. To purchase the book, click here.

Dan Scottholds master’s degrees in humanities and psychology and a postgraduate certificate in trauma, deprivation and abuse. He is the author of The Emerging American Church and pastors a large interdenominational church in Nashville, Tennessee.