New Seminarian: Physicalism & Scripture

Well, I suppose the cat is out of the bag on this one. I lean towards what is called Christian 'physicalism' or 'materialism.' If those terms freak you out, don't worry, I don't use the latter term to describe myself.

Of course, if anyone describes himself or herself as a Christian hedonist, then they shouldn't complain about potentially confusing terms. Plus, then you have the honor of explaining your misleading use of terms. Which is fun.

Anyway.

Here is some of the paper I wrote for a scholarship. I don't think its my best, but I wrote it quickly. By no means am I settled on this position, but I most strongly identify with it.

Bertrand Russell wasn’t the first to say, “Philosophers used to think that there were definite substances, the soul and the body, each that lasted on from day to day, that a soul, once created, continued to exist throughout all future times...All that constitutes a person is a series of experiences connected by memory and by certain similarities we call habit.”2 From the times of Russell to the current anthropological debate, the soul has been under succinct investigation. In the biblical tradition, history offers us three basic conceptions of the human person. The first is physicalism where the human person is entirely physical, lacking a soul.3 The second and arguably most popular is dualism, the belief that the human person consists of two parts; body and soul/mind.4 The third option is less popular than dualism but more popular than physicalism is trichotomism, where the person is body, soul and spirit.5

Physicalism is the current mainstream concept and it can mean several different things and may go by several names. Speaking against a dualist account of human nature (body and soul/mind), Professor Nancey Murphy makes a very fair observation: “the terms ‘physicalist’ and ‘materialist’ are nearly interchangeable in philosophy but ‘physicalism’ is more fashionable now, and it is more appealing to Christians because ‘materialism’ has long been used to refer to a worldview6 that excludes the divine.”7 In theological terms, monism is often considered a more proper method of explaining the idea of mankind as purely physical. Rudolph Bultmann once stated, “man does not have a soma (body); he is soma (body).”8 Or rather, that a human being is a bio-psychosomatic whole, lacking in soul, being united fully and being fully human. While some may nuance the definition, most would agree with it in principle. 
 

While Scripture is of course reticent to use the term ‘physicalist,’ ‘dualist’ or ‘monist’ we will see that the imagery and language used is strong evidence that human beings are entirely physical, fearfully and wonderfully made. To this theological argument we now turn.

Christians have long thought that Scripture teaches several forms of body/soul dualism. However, there has been a resurgence of biblical scholarship that argues for a wholistic account of human nature and much of it centers on the Old Testament and the relationship between Paul and Jesus. Since biblical studies has only now begun to consider evidences from the biological and neurosciences, this shift cannot be dismissed as cultural influences. Rather, it is the product of sound exegesis. 

Theologically, Scripture speaks fluidly about human nature: we are “created in God’s image” in Genesis 1:26-27, suggesting that human beings are a climactic creative event; this distinguishes them from the animals and land.9 On the final day, God rests. We are told nothing about the spiritual natures of the first humans, except that all creation was very good – yet not perfect.10 The creation of human beings takes center stage in the second creation account in Genesis 2:4b-24, where Adam11 is formed from the dust of the ground (2:7), suggesting several things. First, God is capable of infusing inert matter with volition and life; and second, dirt is composed of things that have long since died. Not only are humans created ex creatio (out of creation), we were comprised of dead material and given life. This has enormous implications for the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead12 but I must confine my passion to this specific argument. 
 

In the words of theologian Jurgen Moltmann, “soul and body are not analyzed as a person’s component parts.”13 This is echoed throughout the Old Testament, specifically with Deuteronomy 6:5: “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” The emphasis is not on anthropological partition, but on the whole person living out the closest thing ancient Israel had to a creed; to love YHWH is to love him with all of one’s self. The love of YHWH encompassed the totality of what it meant to be human. When a person dies, this is the death of the ‘soul’ or entire person (Lev. 19:28; 21:1; Num. 9:6-10; Hag. 2:12-13); what is also illustrated is that the ‘soul’ (nephesh) can be killed (Ez. 22:25-27; Judg. 16:30). This applies to the New Testament in Matthew 10:28, where body and soul can be “destroyed” in Gehenna. We find that “bashar” (flesh) can encompass the entire person (Ps. 63:1-2; 84:1-3) and it includes both rationality and emotion.14 

The physical nature of the body is drawn upon two assumptions: it came into existence, and it can go out of existence. This section is to show that physicalism has some grounding in Scripture, and that many Christian philosophers and scholars make their case from Scripture.15 Thus, the material nature of the human person applies significantly to the issue of abortion. As Peter Van Inwagen says, “It can hardly be denied that in the Hebrew Bible we are represented as living dust, dust into which the spirit of God has entered.”16

Just thinking it through.

--Nick 

1 In addition to this, even though a Christian is not entitled to accept materialism, one could argue for a pro-life position on the basis of materialism.
2 Bertrand Russell, “Do We Survive Death?” in Why I Am Not a Christian, 88, 89. Simon and Schuster, 1957.
3 Cf. Nancey Murphy, Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies? see also Did My Neurons Make Me Do It? Joel B. Green, Body, Soul, and Human Life. Samuele Bacchiocchi, Immortality or Resurrection? Warren Brown, Nancey Murphy, H. Newton Malony, Whatever Happened to the Soul?
4 Cf. J.P. Moreland and Scott B. Rae, Body & Soul: Human Nature & the Crisis in Ethics. John W. Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting.
5 Gleason Archer, Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, 260.

6 Nancey Murphy’s emphasis.
7 Murphy, Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies? 1-2.
8 Rudolph Bultmann, New Testament Theology, 1:194. Quoted in Joel B. Green, Body, Soul, and Human life, 4 n. 9.
9 The same word for ‘soul’ (nephesh) that appears in the KJV is also applied to animals as well.
10 John Goldingay, Old Testament Theology: Israel’s Gospel, 64-67.
11 This is not a title, as in a name – but rather, it is literally (and colorfully) rendered as ‘earthling.’
12 See for example 1 Corinthians 15 as the pinnacle argument for the bodily resurrection. I will be presenting a paper discussing this very detail in greater depth this July at the inaugural Rethinking Hell conference in Houston, Texas.
13 Jurgen Moltmann, God in Creation, 256.
14 Samuele Bacchiocchi, Immortality or Resurrection? 61.
15 See Samuele Bacchiocchi’s Immortality or Resurrection? Biblical Perspectives, 1997; Peter Van Inwagen, “Dualism and Materialism: Athens and Jerusalem.” Faith and Philosophy 12, no. 475-488; Kevin Corcoran, Rethinking Human Nature: A Christian Materialist Alternative to the Soul, Baker, Academic 2006; see also Soul, Body, and Survival: Essays on the Metaphysics of Human Persons. Cornel University Press, 2001. 
16 Peter Van Inwagen, “I Look for the Resurrection of the Dead and the Life of the World to Come,”

Unpublished article,” 2. Accessed via andrewmbailey.com/pvi/Resurrection.doc 

For further resources, see Nancey Murphy "Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies?", Glenn Peoples and also Peter van Inwagen.

Christians & the Soul: Nancey Murphy lecture

I found this to be fascinating. I have Alex and Colin to thank for handing this off to me. Nancey Murphy is a Christian philosopher as well as a physicalist, in that she believes that human beings do not possess an immortal soul. She is Professor of Christian Philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, CA. She received the B.A. from Creighton University(philosophy and psychology) in 1973, the Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley (philosophy of science) in 1980, and the Th.D. from the Graduate Theological Union (theology) in 1987.


You should check her out. 

Much could be said, but I think listening to the lecture itself is fascinating. I'm doing it right now. White wine helps.

Radio Lecture

--Nick

A Brief Case for Annihilationism (Updated)

I believe Scripture strongly teaches conditional immortality. I recently had to disagree with my university (it is unnecessary to name them) on their doctrinal statement where they included decisive language on the eternal conscious fate of the wicked. I did this just as an exercise, and knew that my perspective more than likely disqualified me. This is not to say that I disrespect or hold this against the university.

I had only a page to write out my disagreement, and I know much more could be said on this issue. So, here it is.

1) ETERNAL FIRE

A. I do believe that hell will be eternal in effect (Matthew 25:46) but I do not believe that the punishment is ongoing and conscious. Instead, I believe the payment of sin is death (Romans 6:23) and I do believe that, if suffering was all that was required of Christ, then his death is nonsensical.

B. Matthew 25:41 references "eternal fire," and in the Greek, it is used several different times throughout Scripture. One of them is in Jude verses 3-7, where it explicitly states that Soddom and Gomorrah serve as an example of ' the vengeance of "eternal fire.'" And Soddom and Gomorrah was, according to Genesis 19:24-29, utterly destroyed. The content is known as a "sample" of what will happen. 2 Peter 2:6 explicitly says that God condemned them to '"extinction", making them an example of what will happen to the ungodly.'

C. You also have a host of metaphors to describe the ultimate fate of the wicked. "Like chaff that the wind drives away...the wicked will perish" (Ps 1:4,6). They will be dashed "in pieces like a potter's vessel." (Ps. 2:9). These are merely samples of the imagery the Bible uses to describe utter and complete destruction.

2) INHERENT IMMORTALITY

A. This also is in conjunction with Romans 6:23 in that the only people who are explicitly given eternal life are Christians (John 3:15-16, 10:28, 17:2/ Rom 2:7, I Cor 15:42f, 50, 54/ Gal 6:8/ I John 5:11). I believe that those who reject God's gift will not in fact receive immortality. Any hope we may have had of being inherently immortal was lost in Adam's sin (Gen 3:23-24).  John 3:16 declares that "everyone who believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life." James 1:15 states that "sin, when it is fully grown, gives birth to death."

I think the Biblical language of destruction describes Annihilationism, and the presupposition of inherent immortality is unfounded.

3) ALL IN ALL

A. The belief that Scripture teaches unending conscious torment is inconsistent with the host of Scriptural revelation elsewhere, especially in regards to God's total victory over sin and death. If hell, and by extension sin and sinners, exists after the cosmic redemption has taken place, then God is not victorious because sin and suffering still exist. If sin still exists after the complete reconciliation of all things (Col 1:20, Eph 1:10), then there is a contradiction.

B. Annihilationism is an excellent way, I think, to hold together the passages about judgment as well as the cosmic redemption exhibited in God's unfailing love and his desire to be "all in all" (I Cor 15:28).

4) CONCLUSION

I go where the evidence leads, and I believe Scripture quite possibly teaches that the wicked will simply be no more after the end of all things. This does not mean I am not open to new evidence or arguments. I do not believe that people who believe in ETC or Universalism lack intelligence or Biblical integrity, so I offer grace as a substitute for contention.

More to come. For additional resources see:

Glenn Peoples -- http://www.beretta-online.com/wordpress/2011/an-open-letter-to-my-traditionalist-friends/

Theopologetics (Podcast/ Blog)

Interview -- Edward Fudge #54-55, Larry Dixon #62-63.
Debate -- Ronnie vs Turretinfan #64-65, Chris Date vs Hiram Diaz #70-71.
Post-Debate Reflections -- #72-74.

Joseph Dear -- http://3-ringbinder.blogspot.com/2010/09/explanation-of-my-controversial-though.html

Hope all is well.

--Nick

Christian Physicalism

A very interesting article on the incarnation and physicalism. I'm undecided on the issue of physicalism, but Glenn offers a compelling case below.

Although I believe that non-material things exist (God being the most obvious such thing), when it comes to human beings I’m a physicalist, a monist, call it what you will. We, unlike God, are physical beings. And yet, like all Christians (i.e. this is one of the doctrinal litmus tests for being a Christian), I believe that in the person of Jesus, God became one of us.
Every now and then a fellow Christian tells me that this means I’ve got a real problem on my hands. Physicalism, it is alleged, just doesn’t allow for a non-material being like God the Son to become man, if men are physical. The orthodox view, I am told, has no problems here. The pre-existent non-material person (God the Son) could become human and we would have no trouble describing this if humans themselves are non-material beings (or beings that have a non-material part at least).

But is all of this true? Am I the one with a problem, while my dualist friends have none at all? I’ll grant that it’s very easy to name the event of the incarnation in dualist terms – that is, to apply labels to what took place. The non-material Logos took to himself a human body and soul and became fully man while remaining fully God. There. That was easy. But clearly I’ve explained absolutely nothing. I’ve just put labels on what I am alleging to have taken place. Labelling is just as easy for the physicalist, like so: The non-material Logos became flesh and dwelt among us. But again, nothing is explained here. This is merely a profession of faith about what, in the very broadest of terms, happened.

Once or twice someone has taken the risk of trying to snare physicalism in Christological heresy, and in my view been less than unsuccessful. That said, I do wonder how fair it is to try to have a “gotcha” type of victory against physicalism on the grounds that it can’t give a fully satisfying account of how God in Christ became fully human. I say this because dualism, in my view, can’t either. In fact such is the minefield of Christology that it’s very easy when trying to actually explain it, to slip into a view that is historically regarded as heretical.

Example 1. Back in 1993 Christian apologist William Lane Craig debated atheist Frank Zindler on whether the evidence best supports Christianity or atheism. Bill won, hands down. But during the Q and A session, a member of the audience asked Bill how he could account for the idea that God became human in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Here, Bill supposed, dualism would be able to swoop in to provide a swift and easy solution.

I believe that human beings are units that have immaterial and physical portions. And in essence what the incarnation says is that the mind or the soul of Jesus of Nazareth was the Second Person of the Trinity. And therefore, I don’t see any more difficulty in having an incarnation of a divine mind than I do in having an incarnation in our own case of a human finite mind.

William Lane Craig and Frank R. Zindler, Atheism vs. Christianity: Where Does the Evidence Point?, 1993

Students of church history or theology may recognise this as the view dubbed “Apollinarianism,” the view expounded by Apollinaris the Younger, Bishop of Laodicea in the fourth century. It is the view that shared the dualism of most Christians, with a physical body and an immaterial soul. However, whereas most Christians would have thought of us as having a human body and a human soul, Apollinarius said that Jesus had a human body and a divine soul, and that his divine soul being united to a human body constituted him being incarnated. Essentially, the non-physical son of God put on the clothing of a human body.

Those same students will also be aware that orthodox Christianity condemned Apollinarianism. The view was overtly rejected by several Church Councils, and the Council of Constantinople in 381 added Apollinarianism to the list of heresies. Although educated theologians might have a refined enough understanding of the complexities to steer clear of Apollinarianism, simply based on personal experience I maintain that it is the view held by the majority of everyday evangelical: That God the Son, the immaterial being, entered a material human body and lived out his days as a man on earth.

Bill is not alone among evangelicals who have trodden on a proverbial hidden landmine here. J P Moreland affirms the view that Bill expressed in the quote above at some length in a book co-authored by Craig and Moreland, Philosophical Foundations of a Christian Worldview, in which they speak quite favourably of Apollinarianism. Systematic Theologian Millard Erickson, a champion of Christological Orthodoxy among Evangelicals, wrote a substantial work on the incarnation in 1991: The Word Became Flesh: A Contemporary Incarnational Christology. In it, one of the things he sets out to do is to address a whole range of questions that the doctrine of the incarnation raises. One set of such questions has to do with whether or not Jesus was capable of sin. Millard says that he would have been capable, and then discusses what might have happened had Jesus actually sinned – or rather, what might have happened to prevent Jesus actually doing so:

At the very brink of the decision to sin, where that decision had not yet taken place, but the Father knew it was about to be made, the Second Person of the Trinity would have left the human nature of Jesus, dissolving the incarnation…. Had the Logos departed, Jesus would not have died. That would only have been the case only if the person had been merely divine, only the Logos, as various forms of Apollinarianism required. Rather, Jesus would have survived, but would have “slumped” to mere humanity, and sinful mere humanity at that.

Millard J. Erickson, The Word Became Flesh (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991), 563-564.

True enough, Erickson has avoided Apollinarianism. But what is now left in its place? The possibility suggested by Erickson is that when the divine Logos departs from the human nature, the divine person returning to the Father and the human person Jesus continuing to live in Israel. Now we have, not a divine soul with a human body, but in fact two people capable of living apart: one human and one divine. It may not be Apollinarianism, but it is another heresy equally clearly condemned by Orthodoxy: Nestorianism. Nestorianismdepicted Jesus’ “human nature as a complete man, and represented the Incarnation as the assumption of a man by the Word.” There is a clear similarity here with the Ebionite Heresy, where Jesus of Nazareth was a person who was not divine, and upon whom the divine Spirit (Christ) descended. In fact, if the incarnation could be terminated in the way that Erickson suggests, the Ebionite view is essentially correct. I have sympathy for Erickson’s plight. He doesn’t want to fall into Apollinarianism, and he is lumbered with the task of saying that in the incarnation you’ve got a human body and soul – which in dualism generally counts as a complete human person, and you’ve also got the immaterial Logos – God the Son, who was surely a person from eternity past. It’s hard to put all that together and still have no more than exactly one person!

I’m not an Apollinarian or a Nestorian. But at the same time, I would definitely not relegate Craig or Erickson to the legions of the damned – far from it! But then, I’m not someone who thinks (to hijack the language of the Epistle of James) that whoever affirms the entire faith but goes awry on one fine detail shall be found guilty of rejecting it all. The fact is that sorting out the fine details of complex doctrines that none of us think God has spoken explicitly or at length about through Scripture is a perilous business, and we should extend grace to one another.

That brings me to my view. I have once heard someone say that any Christian with a physicalist view of human beings must commit to Apollinarianism and say that the non-material Logos took a human body like a hand in a glove. But of course, this is merely a misrepresentation of a physicalist view about human persons. Physicalism is not just a strict dualism minus the soul (leaving a passive body), and we certainly would not think of the human body as anything like glove. On the contrary, the human mind – what dualists take to be the human soul – is produced by the body. The accusation of Apollinarianism really does not get off the ground when aimed at physicalism. Perhaps a more plausible – although still mistaken – accusation of Christological heresy to throw at physicalism would be that of Eutychianism, the view named after Euthyches of Constantinople, that in the incarnation there are not really two natures but one new nature that is neither human nor divine, but a sort of halfway house. After all, doesn’t it seem that physicalism has to somehow bundle everything that Jesus was into one physical entity?

Even if that is what physicalism does, the accusation of Eutychianism cannot stick, because a substance is not a nature – even in classical theology (in classical theology, having a nature or form is what makessomething a substance).

I want to tread carefully, because there are people who I respect who have said that the Christological implications of physicalism bother them. I do not mean to describe them all in the way I am about to but this does apply to some: Sometimes we disagree with a position, we think we’ve found a problem for it, and because we disagree with that point of view and cherish our own we quite frankly don’t want there to be a solution for those who hold that point of view, so even if we’re not really sure how our own point of view copes with the issue, we declare – with more confidence than we really deserve – that the position in question is in an irresolvable bind. I recall someone telling me – as a reason for me to give up physicalism – that he told a theologically minded friend who he respected that some take a physicalist view of human nature and still say that Christ became human, and that his friend’s immediate reply was “heresy!” This fellow stressed to me that his friend was able to spit this reply out “without even thinking.” I recall thinking at the time – “it sure sounds like it!” Like any new way of thinking about the incarnation, given the complexity of that doctrine, a physicalist view of human nature deserves the time to be turned over in the mind and probed carefully – as does the doctrine of the incarnation itself – to see if there might be some way of preserving the essentials in a way just as cogent as a dualist view. I take those essentials to be that Jesus Christ is truly man and truly God, that he had always been God prior to the incarnation, that he is one and only one person both actually and potentially, and that he maintains two distinct nature (i.e. his human nature is not divine and his divine nature is not human).

In fact some provocative and I think quite persuasive explanation of how a physicalist and yet orthodox view of the incarnation (orthodox in the sense of maintain these four essentials) has been explored in more than one place by Oliver Crisp. He points out where the conflict lies: Traditional Christology has taught that Christ’s human nature involved having a “rational soul,” that is, a human, immaterial soul. The Athanasian Creed refers to Christ being a perfect man “of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting.” But the point in saying this was to stress that Jesus didn’t just have part of a human, but he had a fully human nature, not lacking in any part. My take has always been that a physicalist can maintain this without believing in a rational or reasonable soul in the dualist sense, provided the physicalist thinks that a complete human does not have a rational or reasonable soul in the dualist sense. Fortunately, this is precisely what we do think. It was refreshing to see Crisp make this same point. He uses the term “restricted materialism” to mean “materialism as a view about human persons, but not necessarily about everything that exists.” He says:

Now, it may be that the Fathers of Chalcedon thought that the only way to rebut Apollinarianism was to fall back upon some version of substance dualism. But the restricted materialist would be right to point out that if this is true, the Fathers of Chalcedon were mistaken. For it turns out that restricted materialism is consistent with Christ having the requisite sort of irreducibly mental life necessary for being fully human, such that Apollinarianism is blocked. Yet restricted materialism postulates no human soul in order to do so. One might construe the Chalcedonian claim that Christ had a ‘rational soul’, that is, a human nous, to mean the mental part or component of a human being. … But that, the materialist will point out, is consistent with the tenets of restricted materialism given local property dualism, and is also anti-Apollinarian. Such reasoning does justice to what Chalcedon says about Christ’s ‘rational soul’, without appeal to an immaterial substance.
Oliver Crisp, God Incarnate: Explorations in Christology (London: T & T Clark, 2009), 152.

In the end, Crisp suggests a kind of cost benefit analysis. There are costs to being a Christian physicalist when it comes to Christology – just as there are costs involved in dualism. One such cost for dualism, noted by Crisp, is that if one takes a Cartesian view of the soul and believes that having a body is not essential to being human, then they must say – as Craig and Moreland do explicitly (Philosophical Foundations of a Christian Worldview, 609) that becoming embodied was not necessary for Christ to become truly human. The incarnation was literally unnecessary in order for the Logos to become human! But of course, not all dualists need be Cartesians. One cost for materialism is that it simply would not persuade anyone who thinks that the “reasonable soul” in the Athanasian Creed had to be thought of in dualist terms. I have no doubt that the framers of that creed did think of that term in terms of dualism, but I hope at least some dualists will appreciate why the same intention of that creed can be upheld without maintain dualism about human persons. Another cost, one that Crisp acknowledges to be substantial, is that of tradition. Orthodox theologians since Chalcedon have thought of Christ’s rational human soul in dualist terms, and this understanding has thus become a mainstay of Christology – yet physicalists maintain that this view is mistaken.

Still, this leaves not fully answered the precise relationship of the divine Logos to the physicality that is a human being. I confess to not being overly worried by this fact, since all orthodox dualist formulations that I know of leave more or less unanswered the question of the precise relationship between the divine Logos and the human soul and body (I say “orthodox” here in such a way as to exclude those who, with Craig and Moreland, effectively have the same question to answer as a physicalist, since the appear to remove the ordinary human rational soul from the picture). You could call this the problem of interaction – which, so my dualist friends tell me, is no problem at all. I happen to think it may be a problem in terms of everyday mundane human life, but perhaps less of a problem if we have already accepted that the event in question – the incarnation – is nothing short of miraculous.

At the very least, my request would be that we don’t number a person among the heretics simply because they fall afoul of the duty to be able to account for their view in the ludicrously precise and yet at the same time often completely opaque turns of phrase that one finds in historical Christology. Do I affirm that God the Son became man in the person of Jesus, and that he was and is one person with a human nature and a divine nature? Absolutely! Can I give a full account of this by appealing to philosophical anthropology? No, and for that matter I have yet to meet anyone who in my view has succeeded where I fail.

Glenn Peoples

For the link, Physicalism and the Incarnation

--Nick