The Importance of Personhood Theory
Personhood theory is foundational to Nancy R. Pearcey’s book Love Thy Body and, I think, is fundamental for people trying to understand the world they find themselves in today. First and foremost, I encourage anyone reading this to add Pearcey’s book to their reading list. It it something you can slowly make your way through and it will bring so much clarity to how we can better position ourselves in cultural discussions. Her perspective is from a Christian worldview, but her book is accessible to anyone interested in wanting to understand how the “love is love” slogan became popular and how we went from that slogan to children being deemed able to consent to life-altering medical procedures.
My intention is to give you the basics of this theory, because I think with the basics, and a little logical thinking, you’ll be able to draw conclusions about how this theory is prominent today. It also is something that I intend to refer back to, because it does such a great job succinctly describing the key arguments of the modern cultural movements. What I am going to write here by no means does Pearcey’s book justice, so, again, I suggest adding it to your reading list. You won’t regret it, I’m sure!
What is Personhood Theory?
Personhood theory is derived from the view that people are made up of two realms (or stories) - body and person - and it is often used to determine when a person is considered a person and when they are considered a non-person, or when a person is deemed as living “their true authentic life” or “confined by social norms.” The two realms are often seen as opposed to one another. And, with that, one realm is often deemed more valuable than the other.
This theory was created out of the cultural understanding of morals, or ethics. Many people, as Pearcey states, “treat morality as a list of rules” (p. 11). But morals are actually how we make our decisions. Another word for this is worldview, which is the way a person sees and interprets the world around them, which is often determined by the culture and social influences around us. Or by religious affiliations. Secular morality or the secular worldview “rests on a deep division that runs through all of Western thought and culture” (p. 12) and this division is what brought about our current perspective on human beings.
Today, or in the modern age, many believe that knowledge of the natural world is only possible through scientific, testable facts. Morality, then, is viewed as subjective. It is based on personal feelings and preferences. (Sounding familiar?) This means that we all get to have our own understanding of what is morally right and, ultimately, you can’t tell me my moral views are wrong and I can’t tell you your moral views are wrong. So, if I think murder is morally good, because of my personal preference, I can’t be wrong just because you disagree. Obviously, that conclusion seems absurd, but when each person in a society has differing views on what is morally right, it can make it (and has made it) difficult to come to a consensus. The best, and most simple, example of this is trying to decide when to limit abortions and even if we should. Science agrees with theology that life begins at conception, but because of the body/person split (personhood theory) we’ve muddied the waters. Our discussions focus on when a woman can decide to terminate the life of her child and not whether abortion is right or wrong. So one woman may think the limit should be 6 weeks, while another thinks she should have until after the moment the baby is born. If both women think they are morally right, then based on personhood theory neither of them are actually wrong.
This modern understanding of morality and humanity stems from what Pearcey describes as the academic world’s fact/value split. In order to put that into an image we can easily understand, she merges this academic view with the theologian Francis Schaeffer’s division of morality and science, which he described as a two story building. The lower story is science (or facts) and the upper story is morality (or values). It is the lower story, the science, that has become “public truths” or things everyone is expected to accept despite a person’s personal beliefs. This could be gravity or the laws of motion. The upper story, the morals, is viewed as private, relative and subjective as discussed above. In other words, the upper story can be deemed as something that is true for me, but isn’t true for you. (Again, sound familiar?)
The fact/value split is something that began around the philosophical movement of the Enlightenment, which occurred in the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe. The Enlightenment, also known as the Age of Reason, is the philosophical tradition in which philosophers claimed to build their philosophies on science, or empirical data - things that are observable by the eyes. For them, the lower story was, and is, the primary reality. This tradition gave rise to empiricism, rationalism, materialism, and naturalism. These “isms” are typically grouped together under the umbrella term of “modernism.”
Of course, philosophy did not stop there. The thinking continued. In response to the Enlightenment movement was the Romantic movement, which also originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century. The Romantics focused their philosophies on the upper story, in which the philosophers strived to make the upper story (morals/values) the primary reality. The philosophers of this movement focused on the questions of justice, freedom, morals and meaning, which brought about idealism, Marxism, existentialism, and postmodernism. These “isms” typically are grouped by the term postmodernism.
You don’t need to know what any of these “isms” mean. The point is that they created the foundational arguments for what people tend to believe today. In Pearcey’s book, she shows how the philosophical debate around the fact/value split of understanding reality has now been reduced down to the individual level, in which the “human being has been likewise fragmented into an upper story and lower story” (p. 14). The fragmenting of the human being puts the body on the lower story (aligned with facts and science) and the person on the upper story (aligned to values). This dualism, as Pearcey states, “has created a fractured, fragmented view of the human being, in which the body is treated as separate from the authentic self (the person)” (p. 14). As I will describe in a little bit, this split views the body as something completely separate from the person. Whether the body agrees with what the person thinks, feels, or wants, it is the person that will always be ruled as correct. In other words, the person is on the upper level because it is deemed more important. The body is just the foundation for the person - the biological organism housing the person - but it doesn’t matter nearly as much as the person, according to supporters of this view of human beings.
On page 20 of her book, Pearcey summarizes personhood theory as:
“a very low view of the human body, which ultimately dehumanizes all of us. For if our bodies do not have inherent value, then a key part of our identity is devalued. What we will discover is that this same body/person dichotomy, with its denigration of the body, is the unspoken assumption driving secular views on euthanasia, sexuality, homosexuality, transgenderism, and a host of related ethical issues.”
How Personhood Theory is Utilized Today
Once this split is understood, which ultimately comes down to a split between reality and personal beliefs, everything makes sense. This split view of human life is what leads to every cultural debate we have, especially around what is and should be considered a basic human right.
The advocates for the “human right” to abortion claim that the early stage of human life, the fetus, is a non-person. It is just an organism, a “clump of cells.” It is on the lower story of the body/person split. It is assumed that it has no cognitive functions until an arbitrary moment. Once the biological organism has advanced to some arbitrary moment, it ascends into the upper story and is deemed a person. When the baby has moved from just being a clump of cells to becoming a person, it finally obtains legal and moral standing. In other words, it is no longer deemed morally right to terminate it’s life.
Advocates for the “human right” to euthanasia use the body/person dichotomy to argue that just being a human - having a human body - doesn’t have any moral relevance. If a person is on life support, or has become a “vegetable,” they are downgraded from person to non-person. A clump of cells outside the womb. But that isn’t the only reason people argue for the right to end their life by a doctor. Many believe that if they don’t feel like they want to live, they should have the right to end their life. Again, this puts the person above the body. The body has not determined that it should no longer live - such as what happens during natural deaths - it is the person making that decision.
The personhood theory, for both abortion and euthanasia, provides the logic behind the acts themselves. Many people argue that ending a life whether it be through abortion or euthanasia is the ability to end, or prevent, someone’s suffering. But the actions of taking a life based on perceived suffering implies the two-story worldview and it is dehumanizing, because it argues that biological “humans do not have rights, only persons do” (p. 27). We need to accept and view all humans as persons. No matter what.
The “human right” to promiscuity also follows this two-story worldview, as well. When the body is separate from the person, then what the body does sexually is deemed to have no impact on the person as a whole. As many try to argue, sex is physical (the lower story) and can be separated from emotions (the upper story). This cultural view of sex as an exchange of physical services between disconnected individuals places a very low value on the body. The “right” to same-sex behavior also has its own logic. One that the person who adopts it must disassociate their sexual feelings from their biological identity. The implication being that the “sexed body” is not what counts, what matters is the mind, feelings, and desires. The body, in other words, doesn’t give guidance to what our sexual choices should be, it is irrelevant and insignificant.
The “right” to transition becomes apparent throughout the other discussions of “rights” which degrade the body as being less important than the person. The body is flat our rejected as not being correct - it doesn’t match the person and their feelings and desires. Here again the body is viewed as being purposeless and providing no insight into how a person should live. Sexuality and orientation is reduced to being completely disconnected from the body. Transgenderism views the body as a constraint that needs to be overcome, or a limitation one needs to be liberated from.
With this understanding of personhood theory, we are better able to equip ourselves with sound arguments to counter it.
How Can We Respond?
We respond with the truth. The body matters as much as the person. Christianity goes further and provides an explanation of why the body is just as important as the person, as Pearcey argues throughout her book.
Christian theology does believe that a human being is made up of a body and a person, but the two “stories” are united; they are two sides to the same coin. They compliment each other and work in tandem with one another. The exact opposite of personhood theory.
Everyone, but especially Christians, should value their human body as a gift to be accepted from the Creator with gratitude. In fact, human bodies, as well as everything else in the material world, are the handiwork of God, which holds profound value and dignity according to Scripture. We have a responsibility before God to treat our body with care and respect. This should motivate and convict us to view our bodies, and all bodies, as gifts. Not things that need to be controlled or overcome. To show gratitude for the gift of the body God gave us, we must show respect for the body and the person simultaneously. It is actually understood in Christianity that the outer life of the body expresses the inner life of the soul. The body is the means by which the invisible is made visible. With this understanding, the body is essential to the person and cannot be seen as being separate from it. As God’s creation, we humans were made in his image. This means that we were made to reflect not just God’s image but also his character, and to do so with our minds and our bodily actions. And, since we are all created in God’s image, everyone should be treated with dignity, simply because of that one fact.
The response to personhood theory needs to be clear and it needs to be communicated in both our words and our actions. We need to offer the biblical defense of the body, as well as expressing compassion for those who are trapped in the dehumanizing and destructive view of the body. It may seem like this is a losing battle, because we have fallen so far, but its not. The early Christians were up against similar worldviews of the body. With the fear of God and the example of Jesus they were able to turn society into the one that brought us where we are today. There is always hope in God’s wisdom. We need to be unafraid to share it and to live it.