Can a Christian be Carnal?

Photo by Sean Mungur on Unsplash

From 2007 to 2020, Jerry Falwell Jr. served as the President of Liberty University, a position previously held by his father, Reverend Jerry Falwell Sr. During his presidency, Falwell Jr’s savvy leadership, financial management, and consistent messaging grew Liberty to one of the largest evangelical universities in the world. His success, however, was overshadowed by unsavory details of family affairs, abusive rhetoric, polarizing politicization, and a social media scandal. His tenure came to an undignified end in August of 2020.

In January of this year, Vanity Fair released a lengthy article chronicling Falwell’s story (Inside Jerry Falwell Jr’s Unlikely Rise and Precipitous Fall). One of the most cited quotes from the piece came from Falwell himself: “Because of my last name, people think I’m a religious person. But I’m not. My goal was to make them realize I was not my dad.” The admission was reminiscent of an early 1990s statement by NBA superstar Charles Barkley: “I am not a role model…Just because I can dunk a basketball, that doesn’t mean I should raise your kids.” If you want to see moral excellence, says Barkley, look somewhere else. 

Falwell’s attempt to distance himself from his father’s conservative Christian legacy as well as his blunt acknowledgement that he was “not religious” received immediate scrutiny from across the evangelical spectrum. How could the president of one of the largest Christian universities in the world claim he is not a religious person?

Amidst the article’s backlash, Falwell went to Instagram to qualify his comments: “While I didn’t wear my religion on my sleeve to be seen by others, I have nonetheless had a strong faith in Christ and his teachings since college….While I am far from perfect, let me be clear: I believe Jesus was born of a virgin. I believe in the Deity of Christ as the only Son of God.”

Although the response may have provided some context for his “I’m not religious” concession in the Vanity Fair article, it raised other questions–important questions. Specifically, what does it mean to be a Christian? To what extent should our beliefs have a bearing on our behavior and lifestyle? Falwell Jr’s carefully-worded post separates orthodox beliefs (Jesus born of a virgin; Deity of Christ; etc.) from moral conduct (didn’t wear religion on sleeve; far from perfect)—which seems to suggest that the Christian life is primarily qualified by the faculties above one’s neck: what is believed with the mind and uttered with the mouth.

Carnal Christianity?

Religious belief and moral behavior have always been intuitively linked, but what is the nature of their relationship for a Christ follower?

In the opening of 1 Corinthians 3, Paul addresses “brethren” who are “worldly.” By referring to the letter’s recipients as “brethren,” Paul is identifying his readers with the family of God. And yet, he goes on to call them “worldly,” sometimes translated as “fleshly.” Put differently, he is addressing carnal Christians. 

For some, the expression reads as an oxymoron (e.g., a married bachelor). Like Falwell Jr’s separation between belief and behavior, the notion of a carnal Christian presents a confusing image at best. Yet Paul’s words seem to speak to the technical possibility of a carnal Christian—something between the “natural” person who does not receive the gifts of God’s Spirit (1 Cor. 2:14) and the “spiritual” person who can discern all things and withstand judgment from those outside the faith (1 Cor. 2:15).

While Paul’s words create space for a technical possibility, the Bible does not offer a normative vision for people who call themselves a Christian but live carnal lives, indistinguishable from the non-Christian world within which they exist.

What are we to make of this? Can a Christian be carnal or worldly? The question is hardly new, but locating the answer in a binary category of “yes” or “no” may be less helpful than we think. Rather, we should address the question in terms of directionality. 

“Twofold, Not Two”

In his oft-cited work Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas uses the expression “duplex, non duo”—“two-fold, not two”—to describe two elements that have a singular end. That is, two things that can be independently understood but are not necessarily separate. Though Aquinas employed the term for other purposes, the expression provides a helpful way to think about belief and moral maturation in the Christian life. 

“I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food,” Paul writes. “Even now you are still not ready, for you are still of the flesh” (I Corinthians 3: 2-3). Here, Paul signals the directionality of our spiritual diet—the trajectory of milk to something more solid, fulfilling, and nutritious to facilitate our spiritual growth and character. Like the relationship between an engagement and a wedding, a student and a graduate, or in Paul’s example, an adolescent and an adult—there is a directional logic in the spiritual growth of a Christ follower. As milk intuitively proceeds to solid food, the salvation of God’s people is inextricably linked to their sanctification—holy and set apart for God’s purposes. These are not separate markers of the Christian life, independent and unrelated. They are implicitly linked and linear. Two-fold, not two.

Many years ago in college, I had a disagreement with my wife (then girlfriend) over a moral issue related to a friend of ours. In making my case, I was taking what could be described as a more permissive view. After enough back-and-forth, she posed a question that stopped me in my tracks: “In making this argument, are you trying to get as close to God as possible—or as close to the world as allowable?” The question bypassed my immaturity masquerading as reasoning and spoke to the orientation of my heart. In other words, perhaps the discussion had less to do with the plausibility of my words or the logical consistency of my argument, and more to do with the directional intentionality of my own desires. At the time, I wanted to blur the lines between the beliefs we mentally ascend to and the implications for how we should live. 

The beliefs and behaviors of Christ followers were never meant to be understood independently of one another. What we believe with our mind and proclaim with our mouth is inextricably linked with disciplines that order our loves and habituate us into new ways of being that separate us from the patterns of the world. “For this is the will of God, your sanctification,” says Paul (1 Thess. 4:3). Or as Rebecca DeYoung summarizes in her book Glittering Vices, “[I]f you are rooted in Christ, you can expect to be changed.” 

Growth, solid food, and change characterize the trajectory for those who constitute the family of God. Further, conceptualizing the link between faith and morality in terms of trajectory helps to avoid two pitfalls. The first pitfall is the fundamentalist reflex of designating who is “in” and who is “out” based upon moral behavior. Christian victory and the ability not to sin should not be confused with the inability to sin. Christians still have the capacity to fall short, display selfish tendencies, and act in ways that are not above reproach. When they do, it is not an occasion to judge their eternal destiny or acquire a posture of rigid judgmentalism. Such a response reflects a “bounded set” mentality where focus is placed on lines of separation between Christians and the world and may foster an unhealthy vigilance. 

In contrast, the Wesleyan tradition fruitfully employs a “centered set” mentality—a vision for the “abundant life” to which God has invited us (John 10:10). This reminds us that the Christian walk is toward something (not just away from something). When a Christ follower crosses the line of spiritual integrity, the correct response is to get back onto the path. Biblical words like “repent” and “convert” have a directional notion embedded in them—turning toward or coming back to participation in the life of God. 

The second pitfall, as discussed earlier, is the mistaken understanding that we can separate Christian belief from the pursuit of a holy life. Paul’s reference to being worldly or fleshly refers to a life characterized by carnality, hence his rebuke. As Tish Harrison Warren reminds us, the doorway to the Kingdom is always “cruciform in shape,” purging inclinations unfit for a heavenly reality and refining, remaking, and stretching us to resemble the person of Jesus Christ.

Author and pastor Francis Chan has described a curious reaction to his bestselling book Crazy Love, a critique of cultural expressions of “lukewarm” Christianity. After the book’s release, Chan had readers approach him and say, “I loved your book, even though I consider myself to be a lukewarm Christian.” 

“Then you missed the point of my book,” Chan would respond. “There is no such thing as a ‘lukewarm Christian’.”

Fully Human

In his companion guide to Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, Christopher West provides helpful insight into the problem of humanity and directionality of the Christian life: 

It is as if we are all driving around town in cars with flat tires. The rubber is shredding off the rims; the rims are getting all dented up; and we just think this is normal. After all, everyone’s tires look this way. According to the analogy, Jesus is saying to the Pharisees (and to all of us), ‘In the beginning, they had air in the tires.’

In a play on John 3:16, West continues, “But do not despair! Christ came into the world not to condemn those with flat tires. He came into the world to re-inflate our flat tires.”

The description of a holy life often paints a picture that seems to resemble a superhuman. Early church leaders such as Paul and Peter all the way to modern-day saints like Mother Teresa are venerated as exceptional Christian representatives to be lauded, but not people that “normal” persons could reasonably aspire to be like in their Christian walk. Our flesh, carnality, and worldliness are often characterized as constitutive of our humanity. 

However, the holy, set-apart, abundant life Christ invites us into does not make us superhuman; it simply makes us human. As West’s quote points out, we have been jouncing and jolting along on flat tires—but this is an incomplete picture of our humanity. In becoming more like Christ, we are promised, we become more like ourselves. Air in the tires. Fully human. 

This is not just a promise, it is the teleological end of our humanity. It is the realization of what God has planned for His creation. This future trajectory has obvious significance for our present—or what N. T. Wright calls the “vocation to holiness.” In a reference to I Corinthians 3, he writes:

Enfolded in this vocation to build now, with gold, silver, and precious stones, the things that will last into God’s new age, is the vocation to holiness: to the fully human life, reflecting the image of God, that is made possible by Jesus’ victory on the cross and that is energized by the Spirit of the risen Jesus present within communities and persons. (Wright and Borg, The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions)

The Christian faith is more than collected doctrine—it is a story. And stories have a narrative arc. The holy life–the life Jesus died for–is a mature expression of faith and what God intended our “way of life” to be (Ephesians 2:10). 

Can a Christian be carnal? This may not be a very helpful question. Rather, we ask, what is the directional orientation of a Christ-follower? It is an abundant life, a holy life, and a good life. 

A fully human life.

Kevin Brown is President of Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky.