Do We Believe Greek Dualism?
I’m coming under heavy fire from my father’s Adventist pastor. I was explaining that to be born again is to have our spirit come alive, and he said that is Greek dualism.
How do I answer him? I have quoted many passages of Scripture already.
Thanks.
—VIA EMAIL
Response: Thank you for writing! The “Greek dualism” accusation is the automatic Adventist response when we talk about body and spirit. The Greeks believed that “spirit” was the actual essence of all things, that physical matter was the “prison”, if you will, that holds spirit in bondage. Thus, death was the release of a person’s real identity and was the means of freedom from physical matter.
The idea of dualism applied not only to human nature but to all reality: the cosmos, the creation—everything. Spirit was the essential reality; matter was the prison.
Dualism was a perversion of reality in a sort-of inverse way physicalism is a perversion. God created humanity with both body and spirit, and death is not a release from prison but a separation of the parts of man. Our spirits are born dead in sin because of Adam’s sin, and when we believe our spirits come to life, as Jesus said in John 5:24. Yet Paul develops the process of our glorification in Romans 6–8 explaining that our flesh is very much part of us, and until our glorification, our flesh has a “law of sin” in its members which plagues us all (Roman. 7:23). Yet when we are in Christ, there is no condemnation for us because the Lord Jesus has taken our punishment and reversed our curse of death.
God redeems physical creation and spiritual creation (Romans 8:18–25), and that includes our physical bodies. We do not cease to exist at death because our spirits are kept by God, but everyone will be resurrected: the wicked for judgment, and the righteous for eternal life (John 5:26–29). Our salvation occurs sequentially, if you will—spirit first, then our glorification at the resurrection. But when we die on earth, we are not free spirits roaming the universe; we who know Christ are always “in Him”, and He keeps us until the resurrection, consciously and in a manner that includes our being able to please Him (2 Corinthians 5:9).
Most Christians do not believe in Greek dualism; we do not believe the spirit is seeking to be set free from the body. We believe that redemption is of our bodies and spirits, and we will be fully glorified when the Lord returns and resurrects us. All creation is groaning and waiting for this revelation of glorified creation (see Romans 8:18–25).
The movement often labeled “free grace” is perhaps the closest thing to Greek dualism within Christianity. It teaches that when a person is saved, his spirit is made alive, and the person is free from sin and from the bondage of sinful flesh. They teach that sin, for a Christian, is an outside force, like a parasite, that seeks to invade one’s flesh and cause one to sin—but if one sins, it is not YOU that is sinful; it is the outside force called “sin” that is tempting you.
This idea does resemble Greek dualism in that it denies that our flesh can actually have sin in it prior to glorification. It requires that sin be OUTSIDE of flesh, so that if one sins, it’s not the person that is actually guilty of sin. This fact affects how people understand the nature of Christ as well.
Here is a quotation from the website GotQuestions.org:
Gnosticism was perhaps the most dangerous heresy that threatened the early church during the first three centuries. Influenced by such philosophers as Plato, Gnosticism is based on two false premises. First, it espouses a dualism regarding spirit and matter. Gnostics assert that matter is inherently evil and spirit is good. As a result of this presupposition, Gnostics believe anything done in the body, even the grossest sin, has no meaning because real life exists in the spirit realm only.
Second, Gnostics claim to possess an elevated knowledge, a “higher truth” known only to a certain few. Gnosticism comes from the Greek word gnosis which means “to know.” Gnostics claim to possess a higher knowledge, not from the Bible, but acquired on some mystical higher plane of existence. Gnostics see themselves as a privileged class elevated above everybody else by their higher, deeper knowledge of God.—https://www.gotquestions.org/Christian-gnosticism.html
We do not believe in “Greek dualism”; this accusation is a deflection from actually dealing with the words of Scripture. One of the problems with heresies is that they often have an element of “truth” in them—but they ignore the rest of biblical revelation. Biblical truth often has apparent “contradictions”, such as we must LOSE our lives in order to save them (see Luke 9:24); God is both transcendent and immanent; salvation is entirely of God, not us—yet we are commanded to believe when we hear the word of truth, and we are both physical and spiritual, to name a few. Whenever we eliminate one aspect of the “paradox” of biblical reality, we end up promoting a heresy.
God has not revealed how His mysteries work; yet He has revealed what He wants us to know. He asks us not to try to figure out the HOW of what He reveals but rather to believe and trust HIM. From His perspective these apparent paradoxes are not contradictory, and we can trust Him to know the HOW. We, meanwhile, know the most important thing: God Himself. We can trust and believe His word, and when we do, without trying to parse away all that He has told us in order to logically understand from our limited, finite perspective, the mysteries are less confusing and we find that we can stand confidently in the knowledge that our God is bigger than we can figure out—and He KNOWS US (1 Corinthians 13:12; Galatians 4:9)!
I don’t have a surefire way of answering an Adventist on this subject in order to destroy his arguments because Adventists see Scripture through a lens that they believe is reality. Yet if they truly consider all the texts, they cannot avoid seeing that our salvation is described and explained spiritually as well as physically in the processes of predestination, calling, justification, sanctification, and glorification (Romans, 8: 29–30). 2 Corinthians 5:1–9 and Philippians 1:20:23 also explicitly describe an immaterial part of ourselves which is our identity that dwells in our physical body. For the Adventist to cry “Greek dualism1” is to deflect from the evidence.
Greek dualism considers the body to be a prison from which the spirit seeks to escape; we simply do not believe that at all. We are fully human when our spirits and bodies are joined, and we are eternally alive when the resurrection life of Jesus brings our dead-in-sin spirits to life. We are fully glorified when our physical bodies are changed at the resurrection and rapture of the saints (see 1 Corinthians 15).
Loving the Coffee and Longing to Get Past the Sabbath
I have grown up in an Adventist home. My great-grandfather homesteaded and started an Adventist Church in the Midwest My mother, nearly 90 and in good health, still remains in the area and attends a dwindling Adventist church. I attended an Adventist academy and college, and I have remained best friends with an academy classmate from a different Adventist college.
Upon graduating, she soon joined a Sunday church, to my utter dismay—but we have stayed friends for all these years. I have watched as she is secure in her faith, and I am not. I have other Adventist friends who send me videos from Walter Veith and other Adventist evangelists, and I have started to wonder whether I can be saved in the coming Time of Trouble.
I continue to ask these friends how salvation is supposed to be a GIFT—but yet we will be tortured and killed for keeping the Sabbath! And if we mess up, then our salvation is taken from us?
That does not sound like a gift to me !
Finally, my friend who attends a Sunday church sent me your Former Adventist Podcast videos (about two weeks ago). I have been listening to them and am so overwhelmed, confused, and enlightened! I am at #15 of your videos, but I decided to jump to #146 today and do the Galatians study.
I so, so relate to both of you, Nikki and Colleen, and laugh every time I get my caffeinated latte when the announcer says, “Grab a cup of coffee”!
Anyway, I am praying that God opens my eyes to the truth. It is hard to leave the teachings you grew up with. I am longing to stop feeling like the Sabbath is our salvation!
Please pray for me… I was wondering if I could join your zoom study on Friday nights?
—VIA EMAIL
Response: Thank you for writing! First, our zoom studies are Friday evenings. I will make sure Richard gets your email to add to the list for the zoom link. He sends emails out every Friday afternoon with a link, with a printable PDF of our study sheet, and with a link to the song we’ll sing that evening.
Second, I’m so glad that you wrote and shared a bit of your story!
The issue of the Sabbath is connected to understanding the biblical covenants. We were not taught these covenants as Adventists. By the way, I suggest that, as you pursue the Galatians podcasts, you also go back and do our series on the biblical covenants. Here is a link to that playlist:
Also here is an article that walks through Jesus’s fulfillment of the old covenant and His inauguration of the new covenant:
I’m so thankful that you are finding the podcasts helpful; truly the Bible is amazing and filled with reality and truth, and we were not taught how to understand and believe it in context.
The gospel is the good news that the Lord Jesus died for our sins according to Scripture, that He was buried, and that He rose on the third day according to Scripture (1 Cor 15:1–4)—breaking our curse of death and reconciling us to God by His own blood! When we believe and trust Him and His finished work, we are sealed in Him with His Holy Spirit of promise who is our GUARANTEE of eternal life (Eph. 1:13, 14).
Although we are not currently publishing a printed version of Proclamation! magazine, all our back issues are online here: https://blog.lifeassuranceministries.org/magazine-archive/
We have also added your name to our weekly Proclamation! email updates. You may need to add the email address mail@LifeAssuranceMinistries.org to your contacts in order for the email not to be directed toward your Spam folder. These emails will arrive every Friday. Articles are available at https://blog.lifeassuranceministries.org.
You might also enjoy our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/user/FormerAdventist/featured
You have already found our Former Adventist Podcast; many say these help them unpack the Adventism hidden in the recesses of their minds: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/former-adventist/id1482887969
In addition, we have another podcast called Former Adventist Fact Check in which we talk through the misinformation contained in the weekly Sabbath School lessons. You can find them here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/adventist-fact-check-with-colleen-tinker/id1721662293
Both podcasts are also on our YouTube channel above.
PS. Your email address has been added to our Former Adventist Fellowship Zoom meeting. See you soon!
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