Overcoming Anti-Body Christianity
Rediscovering the Goodness of Creation: A Manual for Recovering Gnostics by Robin Phillips
Ancient Faith Publishing, 2023
(365 pages, $22.95, paperback)
In Rediscovering the Goodness of Creation, Robin Phillips recounts his spiritual biography from anti-institutional evangelicalism to the seeker-sensitive movement; from a fundamentalist Bible school to a cult in the United Kingdom; and finally, from Reformed theology to Eastern Orthodoxy. A fascinating, roundabout journey, to say the least. But the book is much more than a personal memoir. Phillips incorporates his story into a fuller discussion of the historical, philosophical, and theological questions surrounding the church’s perennial temptation towards Gnosticism. In doing so, he paints a picture of life as grounded in the goodness of creation, centered on the Incarnation of Christ, and fixed on the promise of an embodied kingdom that is both now existent and still to come.
Christians of all stripes will benefit from the book’s core insights, since they are drawn from Scripture, the creeds, and the church fathers—common wells from which all branches of Christianity draw much water. In the battle against Gnosticism, Phillips provides a much-needed update to such works as Philip Lee’s Against the Protestant Gnostics and Michael Horton’s In the Face of God, both from the 1990s.
Recognizing Gnostic Christianity
From both his own life and the landscape of contemporary Christianity, Phillips documents numerous Gnostic tendencies that affect us all. He exposes the common misconceptions that heaven is a disembodied realm and that the universe will be completely destroyed. He also takes on more subtle Gnostic elements: the sacred/secular dichotomy of modern society and the misguided dismissal of any art, literature, and music that isn’t explicitly “Christian.”
Perhaps most importantly, Phillips tackles the widespread misunderstanding of Christian worship as primarily a disembodied act that takes place intellectually in one’s head or emotionally in one’s heart. Such a view excises God from the material realm and over-spiritualizes Christian faith and practice. Phillips reminds us that worship includes bodily participation and “thick” practices centered on Christ, the Word made flesh, who comes to us through word and sacrament—all of which situate our intellects, emotions, and bodies in their proper ordering, according to God’s design.
Resisting Gnostic Christianity
After establishing how Gnosticism’s tentacles have wrapped themselves around daily life and Christian practice, Phillips spends significant time recounting the flow of redemptive history, which helps us “better understand God’s plan for the earth” (83). Here we find the grand story of Creation and the Fall; Israel’s exodus, deliverance, and eventual exile; Christ’s inauguration of the New Creation through his life, death, and Resurrection; and the final consummation in a renewed kingdom. A clear understanding of God’s work of redemption and renewal in the physical world counters Gnosticism and establishes the cosmic dimensions of salvation. Here we find a salvation that is much more than Jesus simply making “it possible for believers to go to heaven when they die,” which collapses the entire Christian hope “into fire insurance” (140, 195).
With redemptive history framing our thoughts, questions about our daily vocations (Is my work meaningful?) and of life in the body (Should I get married?) can be more accurately addressed. Phillips paints a compelling picture of what I’ll call embodied Christianity, which intentionally incorporates and values the body, the world, and other people. He lays out eight helpful principles to form new habits in this regard, among them:
Joshua Pauling taught high-school history for thirteen years and is now a classical educator. He is head elder at All Saints Lutheran Church (LCMS) in North Carolina, has studied at Messiah College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Winthrop University, and has written for Areo, FORMA, Front Porch Republic, Mere Orthodoxy, Modern Reformation, Public Discourse, Salvo, Quillette, and The Imaginative Conservative.
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