Pulse
20 Jul 2026
On 1 September 2025, the BBC reported that a former vicar in the Church of England, Geoffrey Baulcomb, was jailed for three years after admitting to causing grievous bodily harm (GBH). The 79-year-old carried out extreme body modifications on a man on 4 January 2020 with a pair of scissors, which he recorded in a nine-second video.
During his trial, the Old Bailey heard how Baulcomb had been in touch with Norwegian Marius Gustaffson, who called himself the ‘Eunuch Maker.’ Gustaffson, who was the mastermind behind the extreme body-modification ring, is currently serving a 22-year prison sentence for running a website that hosted extreme pornography.
Although these perverse and despicable acts of body mutilation are rightly regarded as criminal offenses, extreme body alterations are as old as humanity itself, often rooted in status, community and religion. Examples include the Mayan practice of dental modification to signal beauty, ritual scarification in Africa as a sign of having arrived at adulthood, and Chinese foot binding which denoted status and female beauty.
Among the passages in the Old Testament concerning body-modification, Leviticus 19:28 stands out.
You shall not make any cuts on your body for the dead or tattoo yourselves: I am the Lord.
This command is part of the Holiness Code given to Israel to set it apart from the surrounding pagan Canaanite nations.
In a similar vein, the priests of Israel are strictly prohibited from making any form of alterations to their bodies so that they stand clearly apart from pagan practices. Hence Leviticus 21:5:
They shall not make bald patches on their heads, nor shave off the edges of their beards, nor make any cuts on their body.
While the OT prohibits body-modification on the basis that Israel must distinguish itself from the practices of the pagan nations around it, the NT directs attention on the nature of the human body itself.
Against the pervasive dualism of Greek anthropology which denigrate the body, Paul declares that the human body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and must therefore be regarded as sacred. Thus, in 1 Corinthians 6 he makes what must be a profoundly counter-cultural assertion:
Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. So glorify God in your body (vv 19-20).
The immediate context of this statement is Paul’s discussion of sexual immorality, but the truth it contains and the injunction that follows are not bound by the context.
In addition, Christians believe in the resurrection of the body – not simply the immortality of the soul – which further emphasises the sacredness of the human body created by God.
The clear application of this teaching to the question of bodily modification is that in its extreme form, it can be seen as defiling or disrespecting the sacred ‘temple’. The Christian who seeks to modify their body in a way that is destructive and irreversible fails to honour God with their body.
Because the human body is sacred, and ‘wonderfully made’ by God (Psalm 139:14), theologians throughout the history of the Church have prohibited its wilful mutilation. This applies even to Christian ascetics with their desire to discipline their bodies in order to achieve greater depths of devotion.
Clement of Rome’s (d. AD 100) rejection of the literal interpretation of Mark 9:43-47 (‘if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off’) is instructive. It reveals that there were Christians in the early church who were willing to go to great lengths to achieve progress in the spiritual life. In Recognitions, Clement writes:
Let none of you think, brethren, that the Lord commended the cutting off of the members. His meaning is, that the purpose should be cut off, not the members, and the causes which allure to sin, in order that our thought, borne up on the chariot of sight, may push towards the love of God, supported by bodily senses.
Tertullian (155-240) rejected the dualism of Marcionism, which led to the denigration of the human body. Augustine (354-430) emphatically insisted in City of God that the gods that require their faithful to be emasculated should not be worshipped by anyone. In the medieval period, Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) asserted quite categorically that ‘in no case is it allowable to maim oneself, even to avoid any sin whatever.’
The strongest opposition to the wilful mutilation of the body in modern times is articulated in Gaudium et Spes, promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1965. Putting wilful self-destruction such as mutilation alongside murder and genocide, it describes these practices as infringements of human dignity and as opposed to life.
Whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia or wilful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself … all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are supreme dishonour to the Creator.
However, not all forms of body modification are prohibited.
Radical changes to the body such as amputations are allowed if they are performed to save lives. The founder of the Basiliad – the first Christian hospital complex – Basil of Caesarea (329-379) clarified in The Long Rules that such medical interventions are not only approved but even obligatory:
… we must take great care to employ this medical art, if it should be necessary … In using the medical art we submit to cutting, burning, and the taking of bitter medicines for the cure of the body … Right reason dictates, therefore, that we demur neither cutting nor at burning, nor at pains caused by bitter and disagreeable medicines, nor at abstinence from food, nor at a strict regimen, nor at being forced to refrain from that which is hurtful.
The Protodeutera Council of Constantinople of 861 makes a clear distinction between castration performed to save lives and amputations for non-therapeutic reasons. I reproduce the passage in question in full:
The divine and sacred Canon of the Apostles judges those who castrate themselves as self-murderers; accordingly, if they are priests, it deposes them from office, and if they are not, it excludes them from advancement to holy orders. Hence, it makes it plain if he who castrates another man is a murderer, he who castrates himself is certainly a murderer. One might even deem such a person quite guilty of insulting creation itself … For precisely as the first Canon of the Council held in Nicaea does not punish those who have been operated upon for a disease, for having the disease, so neither do we condemn priests who order diseased men to be castrated, not do we blame laymen either when they perform the operation with their own hands; for we consider this to be a treatment of the disease, but not a malicious design against the creature or an insult to creation.
For this reason, both Catholic and Protestant Christian theologians and ethicists have no objections to organ donations despite the fact that they involve the violation of the ‘bodily integrity’ of the donor. In his encyclical Evangelium Vitae (1995), Pope John Paul II describes the act of organ donation as praiseworthy so long as it is
performed in an ethically acceptable manner, with a view to offering a chance of health and even of life itself to the sick who sometimes have no other hope.
Even the Orthodox Church abandoned its initial hesitation to fully endorse organ donations. As the eminent Orthodox ethicist Georgios Mantzaridis puts it:
… who would not praise the sensitivity of the person who, out of love, offers his or her eye or kidney so that someone else can see or live? And what could one say if this giver was willing to lay down even his life that his neighbour might live?
Christian theologians and ethicists also endorse cosmetic surgery to some extent. Such procedures can be justified if they restore a malformation that would result in medical, psychological, or social complications. However, plastic surgery should not be used simply to enhance personal appearance or physical attractiveness.
Finally, we turn briefly to how Christians have viewed tattooing and piercing.
It is pertinent to note that in both the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Church there is no official doctrine or canon on this subject. But the broad consensus in both traditions seems to be that while tattooing and piercing are not forbidden, restraint is often urged.
Both traditions maintain that the morality of tattooing and piercing depends very much on their content, purpose, and circumstances. For example, while practices such as ear piercing for young girls are broadly allowed, fad-driven body modifications are strongly discouraged and even forbidden.
The Church’s teaching through the centuries on body modification is as consistent as it is complex and nuanced.
It is based on the theological understanding that the human body is sacred because it is carefully crafted by the Creator, and, for Christians, because it is the temple where God’s Spirit dwells. Although the Church generally prohibits extreme forms of body mutilation, it not only allows some forms of physical modification for therapeutic purposes, but also regards them as praiseworthy.
Dr Roland Chia is Chew Hock Hin Professor at Trinity Theological College (Singapore) and Theological and Research Advisor of the Ethos Institute for Public Christianity.