So Pat Robertson has issued a ‘clarification’ about his ‘divorce an Alzheimer’s’ suggestion. This is nothing new in Pat’s life – he’s forever having to issue clarifications over the many controversial things he’s said. Good ol’ Pat – you can always depend on him to put the fun back into fundamentalism.

Before I go on to explore what exactly he’s said this time, let’s just clear up what he didn’t say. He did not say that it’s okay to divorce someone just because they have Alzheimer’s disease. His advice to a man whose wife is suffering from this terrible condition and who was considering starting a new relationship with a different person was that rather than commit adultery he should first have a divorce and then embark on his new relationship. Err … it doesn’t get much better really, does it? But there you go.

A dead mind equals a dead body
Let’s look at what he did say in that TV interview. He said that this husband has found himself in very difficult situation. (And he’s not wrong there, as I have found during my years in pastoral ministry.) Alzheimer’s is a truly horrific disease and he wouldn’t wish it on anyone. It’s like the person is no longer there; ‘it’s like a walking death’, he said. And it is this phrase that is so telling – when you lose your mind to the extent that an Alzheimer’s sufferer does it’s like dying physically. The death of your powers of reason is being equalled to the death of the body – even though the body is very much alive.

Neoplatonism
The roots of this thinking is to be found in our old friend neoplatonism. The mind, the reason, is a part of your soul according to this philosophical system, and it is your soul which is the real you, the part of you that will be with god forever in heaven. The body is secondary and even corrupt and evil and will eventually be destroyed and discarded. Robertson may not have realised it but his controversial remarks were grounded in an extremely old philosophy that has affected Christianity to a significant extent.

His ‘clarification’ adds more light to this way of deconstructing what he said. In emphasising his rock-solid belief in marriage he took examples from his own married life and said that while his wife had breast cancer, he supported her; while he had prostate cancer and heart disease, his wife supported him. That is, while they both had a physical illness that affected their bodies but left their minds intact, there was no reason whatsoever but to be supportive of each other.

Better news
Neoplatonism – and Christian-neoplatonism – divides the body from the soul and when that happens you end up with comments similar to Pat’s. A true Christian perspective – based on the Hebraic tradition – insists that we are a whole person, body, soul and spirit. And that when God saves, he saves us whole – a salvation that will eventually include a resurrected body.

Far better news, would you not say?


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