Adams on the Body 

In February, 1992, Jay Adams gave a lecture on The Biblical Perspective on the Mind-Body Problem. That lecture was later published in a two-part series by The Journal of Biblical Ethics in Medicine. You can read Part One here. You can read Part Two here.

Adams delved into several interesting issues that remain extremely relevant now over thirty years later.

Area #1: Avoiding Dualistic Gnostic Thinking about the Body 

Adams described in detail the Bible’s portrayal of the sacredness and goodness of the body. He spoke against Gnostic thinking—with its negative view of the body—creeping into the nouthetic counseling world.

“The body is respected in the Scriptures. Scripture repudiates the Gnostic idea that matter is evil. Gnosticism taught that spirit is good and matter is evil. Many harmful ideas came from this basic Gnostic teaching which early got a grip upon non-biblical thinkers…. The Bible knows nothing of the body being evil. Matter was created by God and it was created good. When God finished creating matter He looked upon creation and He said, ‘It’s good. It’s all very good.’ The idea that the body is evil, therefore, is not Christian. It is not a Biblical, concept” (Part One, 28).

Adams spoke about the unity of the body/soul—what I’ve called “the embodied-soul,” and what he calls “duplexity.”

“The union of ‘mind’ or spirit with the body forms a functioning unit oriented toward the material world” (Part One, 22).

“This union of body and spirit, rather than called ‘dichotomy,’ as some people call it (meaning ‘to cut into two’), I would rather call ‘duplexity,’ (which means two things folded together, two things brought together). Dichotomy speaks of taking the two apart, and we might call that what happens at death (you are dichotomized), but what you are now is a duplex person” (Part One, 23).

Area #2: The Body’s Habituated Response to Suffering and the Brain’s Storing of Memories 

Adams taught that the body/brain responds to suffering by being habituated to react in certain ways. He explained that the sinful nature,

“…habituates the body, so that when adverse things happen (people say something critical, problematic situations develop, pressures come), the body is taught to respond habitually to those circumstances, in sinful ways. This sinful nature programs the body to respond wrongly” (Part One, 17, emphasis added).

Might we say that the physical body/brain, influenced by the sin nature, keeps the score—by responding to trauma (“adverse things”) in habituated, programed ways?

In this context of the habituated body, Adams explained that sanctification includes becoming,

“…more efficient in the use of this body to evaluate things properly and to store the right kinds of memories” (Part Two, 6, emphasis added).

Let’s recap what Adams is teaching.

• Suffering and the sin nature habituates and programs the body/brain.
• Sanctification includes the body.
• The body/brain stores memories.
• Sanctification includes teaching people to use their physical body/physical brain more efficiently.

Area #3: On Being Neuroscience-Informed 

In Part One, Adams spends 20% of his time discussing the implications of the neuroscience studies of his day. He begins by discussing how science has observed the “duplexity” of the brain/mind.

“It might be correct to say that the spirit has a mind as the body has a brain. I want to examine that statement a little further, but that’s probably an accurate statement. At any rate, this duplexity, functioning in man, this body/spirit thing called ‘soul,’ has been scientifically observed…” (Part One, 23).

He further introduces this section:

“I want to close with some quotations from the work of Penfield, and Echols, and some others just to add that dimension to what we are saying here” (Part One, 23).

Wilder Graves Penfield was “a great explorer of psyche-soma-neuroscience.” He said of himself:

“Throughout my career, I was driven by the central question that has obsessed both scientists and philosophers for hundreds of years. Are mind and body one?”

After several pages of quotations and interaction with those quotes about neuroscience and the brain/mind, Adams concludes with an admonition that Christians seriously ponder these neuroscience findings.

“As Christians I think we need to do serious thinking about these matters” (Part One, 24).

Jay Adams was research-aware and neuroscience-informed. For a more extended historical discussion of these issues, see, INC: Informed-Nouthetic Counseling, which documents historically that nouthetic counseling has always been:   

1. BINC: Behaviorism-Informed Nouthetic Counseling
2. NINC: Neuroscience-Informed Nouthetic Counseling
3. SINC: Science-Informed Nouthetic Counseling
4. PINC: Psychology-Informed Nouthetic Counseling
5. CGINC: Common Grace-Informed Nouthetic Counseling
6. CBRINC: Co-Belligerent-Research-Informed Nouthetic Counseling

Area #4: Physical Interventions and Sanctification 

Adams spoke about the relationship between physical interventions and sanctification. He maintained a very earthy, real, practical sense of sanctification that involved the whole person—including the relationship of physical interventions to progressive sanctification.

Physical Interventions “Speed Sanctification” 

Adams’s audience included doctors, professors, philosophers, ethicists, and counselors. Speaking to them, Adams said, in no uncertain terms:

“Medical help may even speed sanctification (the process of growing out of sin into righteousness) in the sense that it may enable persons to do and think better than they might otherwise. It may even be part of an evangelistic tool so that the person may be enabled to hear and believe the gospel which he could not do prior to medical help” (Part One, 20).

Since the body is sacred, and the embodied-soul (“duplexity”) was created by God “very good,” Adams does not dichotomize between physical interventions and “spiritual” interventions. Both can legitimately “speed sanctification.”

Physical Interventions “Allow for Sanctification” 

Adams includes in his model of progressive sanctification, becoming “more efficient in the use of this body” (Part Two, 6). In this context of embodied sanctification, Adams insists that physical interventions allow for sanctification.

“But, the effects of sin on the body – a body that was injured before conversion – if they can be repaired by a physician will more fully allow for rehabituation and sanctification” (Part Two, 6).

Ministering to the Body Is a “Very Spiritual Activity” 

Adams further asserts that ministry to bodies is a spiritual activity.

“Your job is not merely repairing bodies; it is enabling the spirit to work with and through a body so that God’s will can be done, so that the things of God can be accomplished by that body. You, therefore, are involved in a very spiritual activity” (Part Two, 6).

Enhancing the Body’s Function Enhances “Spiritual Activity” 

In this same context of embodied sanctification, Adams teaches that:

“Bodily parts, impaired, worn, dulled, broken are ineffective tools of the spirit. Therefore, medical efforts that enhance bodily function make greater spiritual activity possible” (Part Two, 7).

Pastors, Elders, and Counselors Are Soul Physicians of Embodied-Souls 

Some might mistake what Adams is saying as limited to physicians of the body. Some might mistakenly claim that Adams is saying that soul physicians ignore the body.

Not true.

Adams begins a long exegetical-pastoral discussion of James 5:14 by contending that every Christian must do everything in their power to care for their body if we are going to serve Jesus.

“If we want to be fully capable of doing what God wants us to do, we must do everything we can to bring this body up to snuff so that through it we can serve Jesus Christ as well as possible” (Part Two, 7, emphasis added).

Adams follows this up with his discussion of the true meaning of James 5:14. (“Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord.”)

“That means James 5 must be taken seriously. People have wrong ideas about what is taught in James 5” (Part Two, 7).

Adams explains that “anointing them with oil” is medicinal. It is a physical intervention.

“People today have made a ceremony out of what was medicine. That passage is not talking about ceremonial anointing at all” (Part Two, 7, emphasis added).

Adams backs up his claim with a lexical study of the phrase “anoint them with oil.”

“The word he used is ale ipho. Ale ipho is a word used by Hippocrates and all the old Greek physicians. It meant ‘to rub or smear.’ It depicts anything but a ceremonial anointing! It was used of rubbing down Greek athletes. Oil and wine, of course, were the two mediums that were used to rub medicinal herbs into a person’s body. That’s what James is talking about. Greeks even took oil baths.

The elders would administer medicine, just as they would pray and they would seek to elicit a confession if there was sin involved in this problem. Sin wasn’t always involved, but if it was, confession should accompany prayer and medicine.

So, at an early date then medicine had a relationship to the person, and he was obligated to do whatever he could do to bring his body into shape where he could serve Jesus Christ more fully” (Part Two, 7-8, emphasis added).

According to Jay Adams, pastors/elders were to be soul physicians of embodied-souls, administering the medical knowledge of their day and providing physical interventions to address the needs of the physical body so people could serve Christ more fully.

The Physical Is the Biblical Counselor’s Biblical Lane 

In The Christian Counselor’s Manual, Adams addressed the specific issue of what he called “the organic/nonorganic problem” (437). His writings there dovetail strikingly with what we have been exploring from The Biblical Perspective on the Mind-Body Problem. 

There are some biblical counseling leaders today who insist that biblical counselors stay in their lane by addressing the soul and eschewing matters of the body. That was not Adams’s conviction. Using James 5, as we saw him do earlier, Adams wrote,

“James 5:14-16, for instance puts the organized church squarely in the business of dealing with organic illness” (438).

“Pastors should, for instance, (a la James 5:14 and 1 Timothy 5:23) urge medical treatment upon members as a biblical principle” (438).

Adams was adamant about the nature of comprehensive embodied-soul care:

“Pastoral care is ongoing and total. It is to be seen as extending over the body” (438, emphasis in the original).

Adams insisted that the biblical counselor must be physiologically-informed.

“He will strive always to work from this biblical presupposition in ways that are consistent with it. He should take the time and trouble, therefore, to study the fundamental functions of the human body” (438–439). 

Based upon his biblical understanding of embodied-souls, Adams declared that the biblical counselor’s work constantly involves the organic dimension.

“That the body affects the soul and the soul the body in so many obvious, as well as subtle, ways is a fact that the Christian counselor must always remember. His work, therefore, constantly involves the organic dimension” (438–439).

Though respecting the role of the physician of the body, Adams demanded that biblical counselors fulfill their scriptural calling of being soul physicians of embodied-souls.

Biblical counselors “can never shirk their responsibility for dealing with ethical matters of bodily use and abuse, nor can they allow physicians unhampered freedom to advise Christians in ways that tend to ignore or exclude this [embodied-soul] dimension” (438).

Adams specifically rejected the simplistic notion that counselors care for the soul and physicians care for the body. The biblical truth of embodied-souls led Adams to a much more nuanced, robust, and complex approach.

“These problems [of trying to divide body and soul] cannot be solved either by Skinnerian reductionism: man is only an animal (all is organic), or on the other hand by simplistic categorization: the nonorganic is the province of the pastor; the organic is the province of the physician” (438, emphasis in the original).

See Also

In a related post, Adams uses the neuroscience of his day to support the foundational aspects of his nouthetic counseling model. See: Jay Adams, Nouthetic Counseling, and Neuroscience.

To learn more about very specific ways that Jay Adams used secular sleep studies in his counseling with people, see, A Little Post About Little Sleep. Adams not only addressed embodied-soul physiological interventions, he used research from secular sources in his specific counsel.

To consider biblical, theological, and historical (church history) support for embodied ministry, see: Is Relief-Oriented Care and Counseling for the Body Sub-Biblical?

For additional, detailed primary source documentation of whole person care—including the provision of physiological interventions for immediate relief—see these following four posts:

Richard Baxter on Depression, Scrupulosity (OCD), and the Embodied-Soul: Baxter ministered to the whole person, including prescribing pastoral counsel that included physiological interventions—relief-oriented care and counseling.

6 Lessons from a Depressed Puritan Pastor: Timothy Rogers: Rogers ministered to the whole person, including prescribing pastoral counsel that included physiological interventions—relief-oriented care and counseling.

Spurgeon’s Depression…And His Body/Brain/Embodied-Soul: Spurgeon ministered to the whole person, including prescribing pastoral counsel that included physiological interventions—relief-oriented care and counseling.

When a Biblical Counselor Battles Depression: Robert Somerville: Somerville, in his own life, and in his counsel from his book about his own depression, ministered to the whole person, including prescribing pastoral counsel that included physiological interventions—relief-oriented care and counseling for the embodied-soul.