Stephen Noll’s commentary links the Declaration’s statement on the “unchangeable standard of Christian marriage” to wider questions of anthropology — body and soul, life and death, male and female, and the church’s response to new technologies.
Clause 8 ties Christian teaching on marriage to the Genesis account of humankind as male and female, prompting broader theological reflection on human nature.
Noll outlines competing accounts of personhood — materialist monism, transhumanism, and dualism — and favors a Thomistic view of one substance with corporeal and incorporeal natures.
Noll argues that traditional liturgical and creedal resources (e.g., the Athanasian Creed, Burial Office) support a vision of body-and-soul continuity culminating in resurrection, which bears on contemporary debates.
This commentary is the fourteenth in a series by Dr. Stephen Noll reflecting on the Jerusalem Declaration. He examines clause 8, which links the "unchangeable standard of Christian marriage" to the Genesis creation of humankind as male and female. That link opens a wider set of questions about what it means to be human — questions Noll treats as central for the church now.
Noll reads the Declaration's marital statement as an entry point to anthropology. He groups the relevant issues under four headings: body and soul, life and death, male and female, and the interaction between ancient wisdom and modern technologies (including artificial intelligence). His overall position favors classical Christian teachings that see the human person as a single substance with both corporeal and incorporeal aspects.
Noll identifies three broad options visible in contemporary discourse:
Noll leans toward the Thomistic synthesis and sees it as compatible with scriptural and liturgical resources that anticipate personal continuity beyond death.
Clause 8's explicit reference to creation as male and female is the hinge for Noll's discussion: the marital standard is defended by appeal to the creational order. He treats the claim as raising contemporary anthropological questions that historic councils did not anticipate and that require fresh theological articulation today.
Ancient wisdom and new technologies
Noll groups artificial intelligence and related technological developments with other contemporary challenges to anthropology. He signals these phenomena as part of the modern pressures that force the church to state more clearly what it means for humans to be made in God's image, though his brief essay focuses mainly on theological categories rather than technical details.
Practical implication for the church
Noll's practical point is that creedal and liturgical traditions supply resources for resisting reductive or escapist accounts of human identity. The church needs a robust anthropology that addresses marriage, life-and-death questions, and the moral implications of new technologies together, because they all bear on what it means to be human in God's sight.
from The Marriage Foundation Tomorrow night (24 September) sees the close of the government’s second big family consultation of the summer. Following proposals to give unmarried couples similar rights to married couples (which closed on 14 August), the Ministry of Justice is asking for views on proposed new wedding law
Editor’s Note: This is the fifteenth in a series of articles by Dr. Stephen Noll, titled “The Jerusalem Declaration: A Personal Commentary.” Dr. Noll draws on decades of experience in the GAFCON movement, especially his role as Secretary of the Statement group that drafted the Jerusalem Declaration and its accompanying
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