The Soul of Theological Anthropology: A Cartesian Exploration (Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies) 9781472436511, 9781315552576, 1472436512

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‘Recent interest in non-physicalist accounts of the human subject raises the question of how mind and body are integrated. In this ground-breaking book, Joshua Farris offers an answer through a consideration of the soul’s origin. His view combines the virtues of both creationism and emergentism, aiming to offer an account of the soul-body relationship that is both satisfying and non-arbitrary. Holding theology and philosophy in proper relationship, Farris’s excellent book offers arguments that are both well-informed and broad in scope. The issues he raises and the answer he offers deserve an ongoing place in contemporary discussion of Christian anthropology and philosophy of mind.’ Jonathan Loose, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy & Psychology at Heythrop College, University of London, UK ‘Joshua Farris’s The Soul of Theological Anthropology is a bold, brilliant defense of Cartesian philosophy of mind in the context of Christian theology. This muchneeded challenge to contemporary secular and theological materialism is advanced with great clarity, insight, and rigor.’ Charles Taliaferro, Professor of Philosophy and Department Chair at St. Olaf College, USA ‘Materialist or physicalist accounts of the human person – whether non-reductive or reductive – comport neither with scriptural revelation and its exigencies, nor with sound philosophical reflection on human consciousness. Given the current popularity of physicalist accounts, Joshua Farris’s book is tremendously welcome. In my view, the greatest achievement of this wide-ranging book is that Farris raises, in a clear and erudite fashion, the most pressing issue for those who affirm that humans possess spiritual souls. Namely, given that the soul is distinct from the body and not subject to bodily demise, could it be that the human person is the soul, and if so then what status does the body have? Although I myself hold Thomistic views on these topics, Farris’s bold and stimulating effort to retrieve a Christian Cartesianism makes this book required reading for everyone who cares about what it means to profess human ensoulment.’ Matthew Levering, James N. and Mary D. Perry Jr. Chair of Theology, Mundelein Seminary, USA

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The Soul of Theological Anthropology

Recent research in the philosophy of religion, anthropology, and philosophy of mind has prompted the need for a more integrated, comprehensive, and systematic theology of human nature. This project constructively develops a theological accounting of human persons by drawing from a Cartesian (as a term of art) model of anthropology, which is motivated by a long tradition. As was common among patristics, medievals, and Reformed Scholastics, Farris draws from philosophical resources to articulate Christian doctrine as he approaches theological anthropology. Exploring a substance dualism model, the author highlights relevant theological texts and passages of Scripture, arguing that this model accounts for doctrinal essentials concerning theological anthropology. While Farris is not explicitly interested in thorough critique of materialist ontology, he notes some of the significant problems associated with it. Rather, the present project is an attempt to revitalize the resources found in Cartesianism by responding to some common worries associated with it. Joshua R. Farris is Assistant Professor of Theology at Houston Baptist University, School of Humanities, The Academy and The Honors College, USA. He is also a member of the Department of Theology. He is Director over Trinity School of Theology. Presently, he is a fellow at Heythrop College, UK. His scholarly work has appeared in Religious Studies, Philosophia Christi, Philosophy and Theology, Heythrop Journal, and Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie (forthcoming). He is the co-editor of the Ashgate Research Companion to Theological Anthropology and the co-editor of Idealism and Christian Theology. Presently, he is finishing A Brief Introduction to Theological Anthropology and a co-edited project entitled Being Saved: Explorations in Soteriology and Human Ontology.

Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies

The Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies series brings high quality research monograph publishing back into focus for authors, international libraries, and student, academic and research readers. Headed by an international editorial advisory board of acclaimed scholars spanning the breadth of religious studies, theology and biblical studies, this open-ended monograph series presents cutting-edge research from both established and new authors in the field. With specialist focus yet clear contextual presentation of contemporary research, books in the series take research into important new directions and open the field to new critical debate within the discipline, in areas of related study, and in key areas for contemporary society. Other recently published titles in the series: Divine Power and Evil A Reply to Process Theodicy Kenneth K. Pak New Voices in Greek Orthodox Thought Untying the Bond between Nation and Religion Trine Stauning Willert Shi’i Reformation in Iran The Life and Theology of Shari’at Sangelaji Ali Rahnema A Kryptic Model of the Incarnation Andrew Ter Ern Loke Recovering the Female Voice in Islamic Scripture Women and Silence Georgina L. Jardim

The Soul of Theological Anthropology A Cartesian exploration

Joshua R. Farris

First published 2017 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2017 Joshua R. Farris The right of Joshua R. Farris to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Names: Farris, Joshua Ryan, author. Title: The soul of theological anthropology : a Cartesian exploration / by Joshua R. Farris. Description: New York : Routledge, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016022891 | ISBN 9781472436511 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781315552576 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Theological anthropology--Christianity | Descartes, Renâe, 1596-1650. Classification: LCC BT701.3 .F37 2016 | DDC 233--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016022891 ISBN: 978-1-4724-3651-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-55257-6 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Taylor & Francis books

Dedicated to Oliver D. Crisp

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Contents

Acknowledgements Foreword Introduction: A Cartesian exploration in tradition

xi xiii 1

PART I

Cartesian souls and theological prolegomena

15

1 A Cartesian exploration in natural theology and prolegomena

17

2 A Cartesian exploration of Scripture and personal ontology

32

PART II

Creation and Cartesian souls

53

3 A Cartesian exploration of the soul’s origin, I: Substance dualism, origins, and theological anthropology

55

4 A Cartesian exploration of the soul’s origin, II: An emergent creationist soul

76

5 A Cartesian exploration of soul embodiment: Can souls satisfy evolution, Cartesian intuitions, and the Christian emphasis on the body?

96

PART III

Cartesian souls, hamartiology, and soteriology 6 A Cartesian exploration of the soul’s origin, original sin, and Christology

117 119

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7 A Cartesian exploration of the interim state and the visio dei (A two-stage eschatological redemption and a two-part human)

131

PART IV

Cartesian souls and personal eschatology

151

8 Picturing the interim state as a Cartesian

153

9 A Cartesian exploration of personal eschatology

166

Conclusion References Index

180 183 196

Acknowledgements

I must thank Ben Arbour, James Arcadi, Ben Blackwell, Chris Bosson, Ryan Brandt, Jonathan Chan, John Cooper, Joel B. Green, Mark Hamilton, Jon Loose, Ben Montoya, Scott Prather, and Jordan Wessling for reading and commenting on various parts or offering general advice on how to shape the project. Thank you to Brian Turnbow for his careful proofing of the introduction. Thank you to my family for their time and encouragement during this process. I am also grateful to the following for help on Emergent-creationism (which became a publication in Religious Studies): Simon Burton, Carolyn Muessig, Daniel von Wachter, and R.J. Matava. Tyndale Philosophy of Religion became a regular place for bouncing off new ideas, so I am thankful to the participants there. I am appreciative to those working for the Read-Tuckwell Foundation, which funded a portion of my dissertation during the years 2011–2012 and 2013–2014, on which the present project is based. During my writing of the dissertation, I am grateful to a donor (who will remain anonymous) for funding a large portion of my tuition during the last 2 years of my dissertation. To those at Ashgate, especially Sara Lloyd and David Shervington, I am very thankful to you for your help throughout the process and I have enjoyed working with you the last couple of years or so. To those at Taylor and Francis, especially Lucy Loveluck and Jack Boothroyd. I owe many thanks to Charles Taliaferro for his encouragement and thoughtfulness during these formative years. Additionally, I am very thankful to Charles Taliaferro for his willingness to read and give insightful comments on several chapters. Most important, I am grateful to Oliver Crisp who has commented on the whole project and provided excellent suggestions and criticisms. I have drawn from parts of the following article, which have been modified for use here. ‘Originating Souls and Original Sin: An Initial Exploration of Dualism, Anthropology, and Sins Transmission,’ Neue Zeitschrift fur Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie, vol. 58, no. 1, 2016. Thank you to the following journals for allowing me to use the following publications or a slightly modified version of them,

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‘Considering Souls of the Past for Today: Soul Origins, Anthropology, and Contemporary Theology,’ in Neue Zeitschrift fur Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie, vol. 57, no. 3 (2015). ‘Discovering God and Soul: A Reassessment and Appreciation for Cartesian Natural Theology,’ Philosophia Christi, vol. 16, no. 1 (Summer 2014), 37–57. ‘Emergent Creationism: Another Option in the Origin of the Soul Debate,’ Religious Studies, vol. 50, no. 3 (September 2014), 321–339. ‘An Immaterial Substance view: Imago Dei in Creation and Redemption,’ The Heythrop Journal of Philosophy and Theology, published online, DOI: 10.1111/heyj.12274.

Foreword

Although it is the default view in the great tradition of Christian theology, many now think that the very existence of the soul is seriously in doubt. One might expect such scepticism from the cultured despisers of religion (as the nineteenth century German theologian, Friedrich Schleiermacher, called them), but some outside current academic discussions are surprised to find this debate among those who align themselves with the Christian tradition. Nevertheless, there is a thriving academic cottage industry devoted to arguing for the conclusion that humans do not have souls and that this is perfectly theologically innocuous. Sometimes this debate is framed as a discussion between those who are dualists, or more specifically, substance dualists, and those who are physicalists or materialists about human persons. The substance dualist claims that humans comprise two distinct but related substances, our bodies and our souls rightly configured. The physicalist or materialist denies this. Instead, the physicalist claims that humans are material objects that have no distinct immaterial soul that survives the demise of the body. Carving the debate in this way is not terribly helpful, however. For one thing it is not clear that those contemporary Christian thinkers that espouse physicalism or materialism deny substance dualism. This initially puzzling claim requires some explanation. Often in popular discussion of these matters it is said that those who are Christian theists (or just plain theists without the qualifier “Christian”), and who also think humans are material beings without distinct souls, are against substance dualism. This is a mistake. Here is why: almost all theists think that God, an immaterial spirit, creates, sustains, and interacts with a material cosmos. Quite obviously, this view requires substance dualism. For it presumes that an immaterial agent (God) creates, sustains, and interacts with a material object (creation). So the problem Christian physicalists have with the historic Christian view of human beings cannot be a problem about substance dualism as such. Were that the case they would not be Christian theists. (The same would be true, the relevant changes being made, for classical theists.) Nor can the problem be in the neighbourhood of the interaction of immaterial and material entities, as God interacts with creation all the time. Nor can it be the so-called “pairing problem,” which has to do with the connection between this particular material object with this particular immaterial entity. For, plausibly,

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God is paired up with creation and interacts with it in all sorts of ways. No, the problem must be about the specific make-up of human beings. Put another way, the physicalist who is also a Christian simply thinks that humans have no souls distinct from their bodies. This does not mean such thinkers are not substance dualists. In fact, they are substance dualists – at a global level. They are just not substance dualists in the particular matter of human beings – what we might call local substance dualism. Today in contemporary philosophy of mind, substance dualism is usually introduced to be quickly written off as a hopeless view, now moribund. Increasingly, among Christian thinkers there is a similar desire to sideline substance dualism in favour of some version of physicalism that (it is said) better fits with the biblical view of human beings that is more holistic in nature. Yet reports of the death of substance dualism have been greatly exaggerated. In the last few decades there has been a resurgence of interest in substance dualism – and there are different versions of such dualism, as there are different versions of physicalism. There are a number of prominent Christian philosophers and philosophical theologians at work today who maintain that we really are composed of souls and bodies rightly configured. Some of these accounts are what we might call refined substance dualisms, which try to make the case that traditional ways of thinking about humans that are substance dualist in nature need some significant revision in light of contemporary work in neuroscience and philosophy of mind. Some, a few prominent thinkers among them, have even attempted to defend Cartesian substance dualism – the version of dualism usually held up as a straw man to be tilted at in textbooks of philosophy of mind. In the work now in your hands Joshua Farris makes a contribution to this resurgence of interest in substance dualism, offering his readers a defence of one version of Cartesian substance dualism. It is a robust defence. He successfully traverses a lot of territory, some of which is arcane and little travelled by modern Christian theologians – such as the origin of the soul. Farris does not expect to convince all his interlocutors. He does not seek to defend his position against all comers. Instead, he provides a reasoned, constructive account of the matter of human composition from the perspective of a Christian theist for whom some version of Cartesianism is a live theological option. Readers who consult this work will find here a number of interesting lines of argument that provide reason to think that substance dualism about human persons – even a version of Cartesianism – is still defensible. Even if readers do not end up agreeing with Farris in all of his conclusions, he shows that substance dualism is far from dead, despite contemporary reports to the contrary. Oliver D. Crisp, Pasadena, California, May 2016

Introduction: A Cartesian exploration in tradition

Before Locke, Descartes, who at the very least was concerned to keep up the appearance of being a good Catholic had written proudly of his own achievements in the Meditations and particularly of his arguments for the real distinction between mind and body, and the immateriality of the mind, on the ground that they opened the way for rational acceptance of Christian doctrine. Locke seems more attuned than Descartes to actual Christian doctrine, at least as it is framed by Scripture. He knows that the essential doctrine of the New Testament is not the Platonic doctrine of the immateriality of the soul but of the resurrection of the dead (Mark Johnston, Surviving Death, p. 22)

Rene Descartes is frequently described as the impetus for the knotty issue often called the mind-body problem. On the basis of his distinction between the soul or mind and body, contemporary philosophers and theologians continue to lay the blame for the denigration of the body, among other blameworthy concerns, at the feet of Descartes.1 Writing from a Christian context, Nancey Murphy describes such a position in the following manner, ‘the radical dualisms of Plato and Rene Descartes, which take the body to be unnecessary for, or even a hindrance to, full human life, are clearly out of bounds.’2 Marc Cortez, generally sympathetic to substance dualism, describes Descartes’ tradition on the mind-body as ‘widely criticised’ and unacceptable in our contemporary setting, in part, because of its ‘denigration’ of the body.3 Despite frequent rejection of Descartes’ ideas and Cartesianism generally, there have been some contemporaries working in what might be called the Cartesian tradition of philosophical anthropology. In the spirit of these recent, positive developments, I am undertaking a sympathetic treatment of Cartesianism in Christian anthropology – more specifically from a catholic reformed context in that I work broadly from a Protestant context – within its larger apostolic trajectory.4 I respond to some common concerns about Cartesianism as compatible with Christian thought and put forward the first positive theological assessment of Cartesianism in the contemporary literature.5 My objective is not to offer the reader an explicit critique of alternative anthropologies. However, I argue that Cartesianism has some advantages over them, and I note some challenges of these alternative anthropologies.

2

Introduction

The model of Christian theological anthropology that I advance uses the tools of analytic philosophy and theology. In the course of The Soul of Theological Anthropology: A Cartesian Exploration (hereafter, A Cartesian Exploration), I examine Cartesian substance dualist theological anthropology.6 More specifically, I explore three variations of substance dualism, which I refer to as variations of person-body substance dualism. I mean to define person-body substance dualism (hereafter PBSD) as a broad category of substance dualism that describes persons as strictly identical to souls (i.e. an immaterial concrete part) or supervening on souls in contrast to bodies. Other variations of substance dualism (or substantive dualism) do not see persons as strictly identical to souls (e.g. hylomorphist variations of dualism). More specifically, I am interested in pure substance dualism (PSD), compound substance dualism (CSD), and composite substance dualism (COSD), which I define below. While I am interested in these three variations of PBSD, some variation of CSD (closely aligned with Descartes) is superior with respect to the theological desiderata for human persons, which I elaborate upon. I argue that PBSD (especially of a compound variety) provides the best account for the theological desiderata in contrast to other anthropologies (e.g. materialism and hylomorphism). To motivate the discussion, see the following desiderata for a satisfying Christian anthropology. An adequate model of humans, 1

2 3 4

5 6

must account for the broad contours of the Scriptural narrative (i.e. the broad categories of OT and NT also seen in the first four catholic creeds; namely, creation, fall, redemption, and glory).7 must account for Scriptural teaching on the significance of embodiment (e.g. in terms of creation, incarnation, and resurrection). must account for the Scriptural teaching on human persistence between somatic death and somatic resurrection. ought to account for the Scriptural teaching about the soul of individual humans as an enduring entity that is also a relational and teleological entity. By relational and teleological, I mean to convey the notion that souls bear certain necessary relations and instantiate intrinsic teleological properties. ought to cohere with contemporary science. should have resources to account for human beings in relation to sin and eschatology.

My interest is primarily with human constitution as an account for the theological desiderata. Having said this, there are several other aspects of theological anthropology that deserve constructive development in the contemporary literature that I am unable to discuss in any detail here because of space limitations and because of the scope of A Cartesian Exploration concerning constitution. For example, I do not have the space to discuss theological virtues, freedom of the will, and gender and sexuality, but these deserve additional work and reflection.

Introduction 3 I liken the approach I take here to the process of soil cultivation, which requires a uniform and orderly way of assessing the field and the state of its soil for the flourishing of the crop. Likewise, I approach the philosophical and theological literature on Cartesianism to assess where its strengths and weaknesses lie. First, it requires that one turn over the topsoil with the use of a spade. By digging deep into the soil, one can find and raise the richer fertile soil. In this case, I am turning over some particulars of Cartesian ontology for the purpose of highlighting or bringing to the surface the good resources it has to offer. Second, in the process of turning over the topsoil, the cultivator must winnow away the bad soil to allow the good soil to receive the crop. In a similar fashion, I will expose the unwelcome and at times misguided ideas often associated with Cartesianism, to take them away, and leave the good ideas. Third, after preparing the soil, the cultivator can proceed to the initial planting. Likewise, I take that initial step by planting some theological ideas in the Cartesian bed. With any successful crop, the process of planting is ongoing. Additionally, if the field is to remain productive, then both the planting of the seed (i.e. the literature) and the nourishment of the soil will be ongoing activities. Likewise, I approach the state of the philosophical and theological literature on Cartesianism by preparing the state of the field in play via the tools of analytic philosophy. In an attempt to highlight the benefits of Cartesianism as a useful ontology, I seek to shake it from its negative associations (e.g. its weak relation to the body, its supposed denigration of the body). In recommending Cartesianism, I begin the planting process by showing its usefulness in theological anthropology. Having said this, the work of ongoing cultivation by drawing from the richness of tradition (e.g. Cartesianism and Christian orthodoxy) and the pruning of Cartesianism and its theological uses must continue beyond what is achievable here.

The Cartesian tradition I argue that PBSD, broadly construed, coheres with Cartesianism and securely finds a place in the Platonic tradition in contrast to the Aristotelian tradition of thought on anthropology. Aristotle, and the tradition he inspires, is generally thought to bear the hallmark of monism. Antony Flew once stated, Plato and Aristotle can be regarded as the archetypical protagonists of two opposing views of man. Plato is the original spokesman for a dualistic view, and it seems that it is upon dualism that a doctrine of personal immortality must be grounded if it is to possess any initial plausibility. Later Flew categorizes Descartes as broadly within the Platonic tradition when he says, ‘In the present perspective Descartes must be placed squarely in the Platonic tradition.’8 The hallmarks of the Plato and Descartes tradition include the ideas that human persons are souls that can exist independent of bodies, that souls can persist immortally, that souls are thinking substances, and that souls are

4

Introduction

privately accessible.9 While the differences between Aristotelian and Platonic traditions may be overstated at times, there are clear differences between the traditions that continue today. It may be more accurate to affirm two broad dualistic traditions, namely, hylomorphic dualism (in the spirit of Aristotle and Aquinas) and Platonic or Cartesian dualism (i.e. substance dualism). Throughout, I am inclined toward the latter, but assume a greater diversity within the Cartesian tradition than is often presupposed in the theological literature (as I show in Chapter 2). Below, I argue that there are two prominent theologians (St. Augustine and John Calvin) that should be included in this tradition because of their shared assumptions about persons being souls, persons potentially existing in disembodied states (although this is particularly challenging for composite variations where the soul necessarily depends on a body in some sense, which will become clear below), and souls existing as thinking substances.10

Situation of the present study With the recent work being done in philosophy of religion, anthropology, and philosophy of mind, there is a need to think in a more constructive theological manner concerning human nature. I seek to do just this by developing a theological account of human persons that ties together philosophy and theology. The enormity of work by theologians and philosophers on the mind-body relationship is partly because the relationship touches on almost every other topic within science, philosophy, and theology. In fact, the metaphysics of human beings crops up in almost every other theological category. Presently, there is an interest in the integration of analytic philosophy with theology. Two examples of this include Persons: Human and Divine and Soul, Body, and Survival.11 Cartesian substance dualism has also seen some constructive development in the context of the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of religion (e.g. Foster, Swinburne, Taliaferro, Lund, and Robinson).12 A Cartesian Exploration is motivated by such accounts, but with the intent of specifically exploring a particular model of philosophical anthropology in the context of the theological desiderata listed above. Thus, the work is unique in tying thoughtful philosophical-theological work on human persons in the contemporary literature with some relatively new topics worthy of further consideration, such as the coherence of substance dualism with theology, physical evolution, the contribution substance dualism makes to the discussion over origins, and theological concerns at the intersection of both ontology and origins (e.g. original sin, Christology, soteriology, and personal eschatology). As a result, A Cartesian Exploration is a contribution to the growing body of literature called analytic theology. My intent is to provide both philosophers and theologians a resource for thoughtful exploration of PBSD and the broader Cartesian tradition (e.g. PSD, CSD, and COSD), informing and at the intersection of various theological topics. I approach this by first advancing an initial defence for Cartesianism and

Introduction 5 establishing the variations of PBSD and their implications for theology. Next, I show that PBSD provides a persuasive account for the Scriptural narrative of creation, fall, redemption, and glory. Finally, I address contemporary dualism, specifically Cartesianism, in conjunction with the discussion surrounding the origin of the soul by drawing from recent studies in the philosophy of mind for constructive theological purposes.

Literature survey Besides systematic theologies, introductory and individual theological anthropologies, no other resources exist addressing a Cartesian model on theological matters intersecting with human nature. Such a resource has relevance in contemporary times given the interest in philosophy of mind and personal ontology. Furthermore, the question over the compatibility of Cartesianism with theological anthropology should be an open question in our current discussions even though some have closed the discussion. A similar approach to A Cartesian Exploration is Embodied Souls, Ensouled Bodies by Marc Cortez.13 Cortez utilizes a Barthian inspired method of doing theology, applying it to various models of persons to assess their value in Christology and anthropology. Although this is helpful, it is distinct from the present work in that Cortez advances a particular method. By method, I intend to convey that Cortez offers the reader a systematic procedure for accomplishing the task of theologizing about human beings. A Cartesian Exploration, however, advances a particular model. By model, I mean that we approach the study of theological anthropology using a representative object to follow when addressing theological matters concerning human beings. As previously mentioned, the two most recent analytic approaches to the study of human beings have been Persons: Human and Divine and Soul, Body, and Survival.14 Neither addresses any specific model, but the present work does. As a result, the present work allows for deeper exploration of the model’s implications. An approach that comes close to what this monograph will achieve is Personal Identity and Resurrection, but this again lacks the specificity of one particular model and only addresses a single doctrine.15 One resource that intimately overlaps with the objectives and aims used here is the Ashgate Research Companion to Theological Anthropology.16 The editors are explicitly interested in furnishing the foundations for constructive theological anthropology by drawing from analytic philosophical anthropology. While the Companion addresses several distinct models of human composition among other relevant topics, A Cartesian Exploration is an engagement with one particular model of anthropology in a theological context. There is also a growing and sophisticated literature on the topic of Cartesian substance dualism. The most recent publication is Mind, Brain, and Free Will by Richard Swinburne,17 primarily a piece on the philosophy of mind that overlaps on issues related to the philosophy of religion. In recent literature on philosophy of mind and religion, Charles Taliaferro has written Consciousness

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Introduction

and the Mind of God, and John Foster has written The Immaterial Self.18 Both Taliaferro and Foster defend distinct variations of substance dualism, but each would fall under PBSD (i.e. Cartesianism), as I understand them. A recent book defending Thomistic substance dualism (yet not too dissimilar in some respects to Cartesianism), that is explicitly a piece of philosophy of religion is The Recalcitrant Imago Dei by J.P. Moreland.19 It too does not explicitly address particular doctrines found in the domain of biblical and systematic theology. The account I advance here is motivated and influenced by John Cooper’s popular work entitled Soul, Body, and Life Everlasting.20 Cooper argues for a kind of ‘holistic’ dualism: that humans comprise body and soul, but function as a unity of both as the metaphysical entailment from the scriptural teaching on the afterlife. A Cartesian Exploration builds on Cooper’s foundation with the aim of developing a model of theological anthropology to provide fertile soil for a variety of doctrinal commitments. In numerous places, I take some of Cooper’s conclusions forward by engaging with some recent contemporary biblical scholarship (e.g. N.T. Wright, Joel Green). On the theological side, there are a few noteworthy works similar in their approach to the project I put forward here. First, is the book Rethinking Human Nature by Kevin Corcoran.21 Corcoran advances a new philosophical model for theological anthropology. He responds to traditional views of persons and defends an alternative view within materialism called the constitution view.22 Corcoran’s view is that bodies and brains constitute human persons or minds, but the person or mind is not identical to its body and brain. The person comprises higher-order properties derived from lower-level physical properties. Corcoran is specifically interested in offering a theological alternative to dualism, a view he believes to be contrary to both common sense and philosophical reflection. The difference between Rethinking Human Nature and the present volume is that I advance a view that more persuasively accounts for Scriptural teaching on humans in personal eschatology, which is in keeping with traditional interpretations of Scripture and Christian doctrine. Although the traditional motivation favouring substance dualism is unlikely to move Corcoran away from materialism and toward dualism, I lay out some reasons in Chapter 7 that ought to motivate Corcoran to rethink his materialism. Second, Nancey Murphy, in Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies?, 23 argues in favour of a Christian variation of non-reductive materialism in the context of various theological issues. In comparison, her volume is not as comprehensive as A Cartesian Exploration. Despite the fact that Murphy’s book is in the Current Series of Theology published by Cambridge University Press, her interaction with the theological literature is minimal. Joel Green, in Body, Soul, and Human Life, engages with the theological literature, specifically the biblicaltheological literature.24 He defends a monist view of human nature and argues that monism satisfies both neuroscience and Scripture in contrast to substance dualist alternatives. Furthermore, two works of an interdisciplinary nature deserve attention because the authors focus on the soul question in theology. The first is

Introduction 7 Whatever Happened to the Soul?, which calls into question the need for soul as an immaterial substance for science and theology.25 Another important work In Search of the Soul26 advances several views on the soul and the relevant scientific and theological evidence in favour of the soul. Both works, however, lack the theological robustness and constructive development of a substance dualist model for theological anthropology. There are other relevant works on theological anthropology but their aims are very different from A Cartesian Exploration.

Theological anthropology and method The starting point for a Christian anthropological method ought to include what a human person is and from there seek to situate and integrate that view with the Christian Scriptures and the Christian tradition. 1. Philosophy: I am of the opinion that the first-person perspective cannot be dismissed when developing a particular theological anthropology, such that introspection becomes an important source of knowledge for understanding the self and other persons.27 In my view, a first-person epistemology is a necessary starting point for coming to understand basic truths about persons. The metaphysical grounding for first-person knowledge is an immaterial substance. I do not believe this contradicts Scriptural teaching, but coherently accounts for it. Philosophy is not higher than Scripture in the hierarchy of authorities to which the theologian appeals in making dogmatic judgements, but it does play a role prior to Scripture in some logical sense. Prior to engaging the Scriptures this requires further filling out that without Scripture human philosophizing would be unable to discover, grasp, and articulate. Specifically, I am talking about humans in relation to the Divine. Furthermore, I argue that an intimate interface exists between our internal knowledge (intuitions, and common sense construed as the immediate deliverances of reason common to persons) and Scripture’s picture of persons. Thus, the two sources of knowledge overlap and mutually inform the other.28 2. Scripture and its role. While philosophy has a role in furnishing some foundational items of knowledge about human persons, it is incomplete without special revelation (i.e. Scripture) because special revelation completes what we know from nature. Thus, both are necessary and complement the other when constructing a theological anthropology. I assume that Scripture will not contradict what we know directly about our selves because the first-person perspective is foundational to the experience of other objects in the world. It seems that this perspective overlaps with Scripture and is true on prima facie grounds. Scripture fills out the notion of human nature via the Fall found in Genesis 3–6 and provides new information with respect to redemption and glorification, specifically. While we as humans have some general knowledge of persons from nature, we need the Christian Scriptures (guided by the catholic Church teachings codified in Nicaea, the Apostles Creed, and Chalcedon) to gain more specific knowledge of persons. The Scriptures inform us about the reason and purpose for why human persons were created and how it is that

8

Introduction

they can achieve that purpose. Without knowledge of Christ’s person as the human exemplar gained from the Christian Scriptures, we would not know the final destiny of our created natures; nature alone is not enough. Knowledge of persons requires that we read the Scriptures in light of the Christian tradition given that the Scriptures are written in and for the universal church. Throughout A Cartesian Exploration, I seek to link the Scriptural desiderata to a view of human composition as an accounting for it. Furthermore, I am interested in reading the Christian Scriptures in light of a metanarrative encompassing all the Scriptural data on humans found in orthodox Christian thought. Although I rely on some traditional readings and contemporary biblical scholarship, I am not assuming the role of a biblical scholar. In the chapter on the interim state, I cite several Scriptural examples, read prima facie, to support the argument for the metaphysical simplicity of the soul. I am concerned with the notion of the soul as a metaphysical accounting for the biblical narrative of creation, fall, redemption, and glory as it relates to humans. I am not seeking to offer a comprehensive exegesis of each passage. In Chapter 7, I take one paradigmatic passage (2 Corinthians 5:1–10) in conjunction with 1 Corinthians 15 along with a few others for the purpose of advancing a reading that favours not merely substance dualism in general and PBSD in particular. In this way, I do not engage all of the biblical material relevant to the study of human composition. Instead of engaging all of the biblical material on human composition, I advance a plausible reading drawn from the Christian tradition and contemporary biblical scholarship to highlight specific features of the passage. Finally, I draw from contemporary philosophical literature to tease out a particular view of humans that makes sense of 2 Corinthians 5:1–10. 3. Tradition is a guard and a guide in constructive theology (e.g. Ecumenical Councils and early church theologians). In constructing a theological anthropology, I explore substance dualism, firmly situated in the Plato-AugustineDescartes tradition. These philosophers share a belief that persons are souls with some relational and contingent attachment to bodies, and that human persons are closely related to God in the hierarchy of being. More specifically, the role of nous, or mind, has primacy in the ontology of Plato, Augustine, and Descartes – as noted above.29 It should be unsurprising that Augustine influences Calvin.30 Given this, it is fair to incorporate John Calvin as another authority within this tradition. In fact, Calvin is explicit when referring to humans that the one who is closest to the truth is Plato. Calvin says in one place, ‘It would be foolish to seek a definition of “soul” from the philosophers. Of them hardly one, except Plato, has rightly affirmed its immortal substance.’ A few sentences later, he states, ‘Hence Plato’s opinion is more correct, because he considers the image of God in the soul.’31 In another place, Calvin describes the soul similarly to Plato and Augustine by referring to humans as souls (which he means as a created immortal substance) that are attached to bodies, but can be separated from those bodies.32 In several other places, Calvin gives primacy to the soul or the mind in its relation to God and in its knowing of God.33 This is not to say that Calvin affirmed all that

Introduction 9 Plato says, but that his ideas on personal ontology significantly overlap with Plato.34 These ideas are reflected in Descartes, as well. In fact, there has even been some discussion over the consistency of integrating Cartesianism with Reformation theology because of the overlap between Augustine and Calvin, and Descartes’ similarity to the Augustinian project in terms of the soul’s relationship to God.35 So it is not without warrant to link Plato, Augustine, Descartes, and Calvin together as the backdrop for an ongoing tradition that continues today with the likes of many contemporary substance dualists who affirm the hallmarks of the Plato‑Augustine‑Descartes tradition. In addition to Plato‑Augustine‑Descartes and Calvin, the view advanced here finds some traction among the Alexandrian theologians like Origen, Clement, and Philo.36 Alexandrians espouse a view contrastive to materialism, hylomorphism, and Thomism (as Thomism is normally construed, although, in the present project, I consider, at least, one variation that is closely aligned with what is normally considered Augustinian and Cartesian). Some Alexandrians refer to human beings as having two distinct substances whereby God must actually create the soul because of its radically different nature from the body. In the context of Christology, J.N.D. Kelly states, We have seen how frequently the union of the body and soul, two disparate substances, was quoted by the Alexandrian teachers as an illustration of the union of divinity and humanity in Christ … each individual soul was created independently by God at the moment of its infusion to the body.37 In this way, the Alexandrian theologians articulate a view approaching and similar to Cartesianism – as it is often construed today. Cartesianism is simply a term referring to a set of views that I have already situated in the PlatoAugustine-Descartes tradition, thus averting charges of anachronism. As we can see the spirit of the Cartesian tradition is situated in a long history within Christian thought. The soil is rich, but it doesn’t end here. Another theologian might find a comfortable place in this tradition. There are several places in A Cartesian Exploration where I refer to Thomas Aquinas as a theological authority, thus contributing to the good soil. Not only do I do this because of his influence in the Roman Catholic Church and Reformed scholasticism, but more importantly because he offers the theologian some resources that provide interesting and helpful solutions to theological matters. For example, I draw from Aquinas’ commentary on 2 Corinthians (along with his teachings in the Summas on the ‘beatific vision’) for the reason that his interpretation seems to align with a proper reading of the passage and elucidates important aspects of it. In Chapter 7, I argue that persons must persist in the intermediate state based on the 2 Corinthians 5 affirmation of the beatific vision. On this matter, ironically, Aquinas seems closer to Plato than Aristotle because of his affirming that persons persist with qualitative experiences not simply souls (i.e. wherein with some versions of hylomorphism only the soul

10

Introduction

would persist as a part that previously composed the person). Finally, I draw from other theological authorities (i.e. divines) where they seem to elucidate or support the arguments advanced. We now turn to an overview of the chapters that follow. I begin my research in the most natural place, theological prolegomena. Beginning with Cartesianism, I suggest that it is not only the most natural place to begin with respect to human persons, but that it naturally presupposes a broader theistic ontology to ground it. In this way, both the Divine and humans are related in virtue of the fact that both are immaterial in nature. To buttress this claim, I develop a version of what has been called the Knowledge Argument. I suggest that persons are basically minds that have conscious access to their ideas and that minds supply the unity to ideas, thus ruling out materialism and a bundle theory of persons. In Chapter 2, I explore Cartesianism as a natural ground for the scriptural narrative on human beings. A theological starting point on humans beings is called the imago Dei (i.e. the image of God). I argue that an immaterial substance provides a persuasive accounting of the human story and has the resources to capture the data. I conclude by parsing out variations of Cartesianism. In the heart of the work, Part II; I discuss humans in their creational contexts by specifically exploring the origin of the soul. Picking up from Chapter 2, I briefly lie out causal agency and briefly argue that the Cartesian variants fit or yield certain origin views in Chapter 3. I lay out one new view deserving additional attention in the theological literature next. In Chapter 4, I explore one novel view of origins. Not completely satisfied with the previous views on offer, I argue that there is an alternative option on offer. Given the recent developments in philosophy of mind, it appears that there is a model that satisfyingly approaches a particular brand of emergentism that remains creationist. In Chapter 5, I take up the task of exploring the relation of body and soul based on the previous substance dualist variants and their origin models. I motivate a story that supplies some content to the relation between body and soul and I integrate it with some relevant theological material. In Part III, I explore the soul’s origins and its implications for the doctrine of sin and salvation. Chapter 6 offers the reader a discussion of the transmission problem of original sin. Chapter 7 offers the reader an exploration of salvation as transcendent and transformative, which seems to require the doctrine of the soul not simply as a philosophical necessity but a theological datum. In Part IV, I conclude my findings by considering personal eschatology. By way of transition, I consider the possibility of disembodied persistence concerning the various origin models (Chapter 8). In Chapter 9, I criticize both traducianism and one variant of emergent substance dualism as potentially unsatisfactory accountings of the afterlife. Finally, I consider the possibility of the physical resurrection given substance dualism.

Introduction

11

Notes 1 Surprisingly the mind-body distinction, as it is commonly understood in our modern situation, may not be entirely appropriate to apply to Descartes – eventually the mind-body problem was attributed to Descartes as the cause. See Daniel N. Robinson in his excellent work, Consciousness and Mental Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008). The centrality of mind/soul with its significance in the world is not unique to Descartes because he was just recognizing what philosophers and theologians prior to him have long recognized about the soul/mind. It is not until the modern consensus assumes the notion of ‘physical completeness’ that the mind becomes a problem. Descartes shares distinction of mind and body along with ancient and medieval thinkers. I refer the reader to Robinson’s fascinating discussion. 2 Nancey Murphy, Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 22. 3 Marc Cortez, Theological Anthropology: A Guide for the Perplexed (New York: T&T Clark, 2010), p. 70. 4 By reformed I am referring to what is commonly called the Protestant tradition of Christianity. The term catholic, in this context, refers to the universal church continuous with apostolic teaching codified in the Apostles creed, Nicene tradition, Chalcedon, and the Athanasian creed. 5 There are other sympathetic treatments of Cartesianism as I have mentioned and will discuss below, but these are not seeking to explicitly expound on it in and according to various theological categories. 6 For a recent set of essays exploring analytic approaches to theology, see Oliver Crisp and Michael Rea, eds, Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), see especially the introduction and chap. 1. Analytic theology is unique in its integration of the analytic philosophical tradition with the construction of theology within a particular tradition(s). Characteristically, analytic approaches are concerned with clarity, detail, and consistently tying theological development to its metaphysical and ontological foundations. By saying this, I do mean to distinguish the present project, to some degree, from continuing developments within analytic philosophy of religion. My interest in undertaking the present project is to practice analytic theology not so much analytic theology. See Thomas McCall for his useful distinctions, An Invitation to Analytic Christian Theology (Downers Grove: IVP, 2015), see especially chap. 1. Those practitioners who do this quite well include, but are not limited to, the following: Oliver Crisp, Thomas McCall, and William Abraham. Some analytics, while necessarily important to the present project, are beholden to analytic dissection of parts rather than conceptual architecture. Both are important. As I approach Cartesianism, I perform some analytic dissection, but I also seek to tie it to broader comprehensive issues. It is important to situate the pieces/parts to their larger framework in their appropriate location. John Webster, not a practitioner of analytic theology, makes an important point about what he calls theological theology. He claims that all of the parts are only made sense of in light of its relation to God, or the Trinity as in Christian theology, which begins with God’s revelation of himself. See John Webster, ‘What makes Theology Theological,’ in Journal of Analytic Theology, vol. 3, May 2015. Thomas Morris begins from a similar standpoint in his philosophical theology, see Our Idea of God (Vancouver: Regent Publishing, 1997). One might add to this, that Christian theology begins with God’s revelation in the context of the church’s reception of it. This is an important point to stress, but it certainly seems compatible with the use of analytic tools for additional conceptual clarity. 7 It should be unsurprising that creation, fall, redemption, and glory seem to be the broad theological categories emerging from the Scriptural narrative, which the four

12

8 9 10 11 12

13 14 15 16 17 18

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20 21 22

Introduction earliest catholic creeds reflect (e.g. Apostles Creed, Nicene Creed, Chalcedon, and Athanasian Creed). Antony Flew, ‘The Cartesian Assumption,’ in Immortality, ed. by Paul Edwards (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1997), p. 220. Ibid. 221–223. For an interesting defence of the soul that does not seem to fit with Cartesianism see Keith Ward’s In Defence of the Soul (London: Oneworld, 1998). Peter van Inwagen and Dean Zimmerman, eds, Persons: Human and Divine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Kevin Corcoran, ed., Soul, Body, and Survival: Essays on The Metaphysics of Human Persons (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001). John Foster, The Immaterial Self: A Cartesian Conception of the Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Richard Swinburne, Mind, Brain, and Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). David H. Lund, The Conscious Self: The Immaterial Center of Subjective States (Amherst: Humanity Books, 2005). Charles Taliaferro, Consciousness and the Mind of God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Howard Robinson, ‘A Dualist Account of Embodiment, in The Case for Dualism ed. by John R. Smythies and John Beloff (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1989). Howard Robinson, ‘Dualism’, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. by Edward N. Zalta, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism (accessed 21 April 2014). Marc Cortez, Embodied Souls, Ensouled Bodies: An Exercise in Christological Anthropology and its Significance for the Mind/Body Debate (New York: T&T Clark, 2008). Peter van Inwagen and Dean Zimmerman, eds, Persons: Human and Divine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Kevin Corcoran, ed., Soul, Body, and Survival (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002). Georg Gasser, ed., Personal Identity and Resurrection (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2011). Joshua R. Farris and Charles Taliaferro, eds, Ashgate Research Companion to Theological Anthropology (Aldershot: Ashgate publishing, 2015). Richard Swinburne, Mind, Brain, and Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). Charles Taliaferro, Consciousness and the Mind of God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). John Foster, The Immaterial Self: A Defence of Cartesian Dualism (London: Routledge Press, 1991). However, Foster begins his defence of Cartesianism, but toward the end defends a version of Idealism. J.P. Moreland, The Recalcitrant Imago Dei: Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism (London: SCM Press, 2009). Moreland’s variation of substance dualism is more in line with Thomas, which has been called Thomistic substance dualism. However, Moreland’s variation of Thomistic dualism bears a likeness to variations of Cartesian dualism that are more integrated and holistic. I say this based on Moreland’s assumptions about the soul’s simplicity (which he makes much of in chap. 1), the soul’s awareness of itself, the fact that a person is identical to a soul, and the soul’s independence from the body. Moreland’s view is Thomistic in that the soul (construed as an Augustinian immaterial part) informs material stuff, as we have in hylomorphism. John Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Press, 2000). Kevin Corcoran, Rethinking Human Nature: A Christian Materialist Alternative to the Soul (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006). While the view (or set of views) on offer in this project might be construed as traditional in some sense, not all of the models are traditional in a strict sense. Pure and compound varieties of substance dualism, I suggest, do not work from the assumption that the soul is the ‘life’ of the body in some senses of ‘life.’ For example, Aristotle took it that the soul was the life-principle of the body. It seems that this would be incidental to the understanding of souls and persons within the

Introduction

23 24 25 26 27 28

29

30

31 32 33 34 35

36

37

13

Christian traditional view of the soul, on the models presented here, as the transcendent part and the core for interacting with God. Nancey Murphy, Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Joel Green. Body, Soul, and Human Life: The Nature of Humanity in the Bible (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2008). Warren S. Brown, Nancey Murphy and H. Newton Malony, eds, Whatever Happened to the Soul? Scientific and Theological Portraits of Human Nature (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998). Joel B. Green and Stuart L. Palmer, eds, In Search of the Soul: Four views on the Mind-body problem (Downers Grove: Inter Varsity Press, 2005). See Fergus Kerr’s critique of the sort of Cartesian method used here in his Theology After Wittgenstein (Oxford: Ashford Colour Press, 1997), see especially chaps 3 and 4. In the final section, he explores the nature of theology without the mind and its internal life. Chisholm develops this notion of ‘seeming’ more fully. Also see Chris Tucker, ‘Phenomenal Conservatism and Evidentialism in Religious Epistemology,’ in Evidence and Religious Belief, ed. by Kelly James Clark and Raymond J. Van Arragon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), chap. 4. A very similar approach, yet slightly more modest, is Kai-Man Kwan, The Rainbow of Experiences, Critical Trust, and God: A Defense of Holistic Empiricism (New York: Bloomsbury, 2011). Little would change here if one were to affirm Reformed epistemology. The way or manner of justifying beliefs would look a bit different, but the conclusion would be similar. For a different approach, see Paul Helm, Faith and Understanding (Grand Rapids: WM. B. Eerdmans, 1997). See Stephen Menn, Descartes and Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Herein, Menn persuasively argues in favour of the notion that Descartes and Augustine had similar anthropologies and theological programs. Also see Daniel N. Robinson, Consciousness and Mental Life, pp. 56–58. This is especially true as it pertains to the knowledge of God and persons. See Paul Helm, Calvin at the Centre (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 27–33. While Calvin is strikingly Augustinian, his language is much more subdued and pessimistic about what we know of God and how we come to know. Calvin does not draw heavily on Augustine’s notion of ‘vision.’ John Calvin, Institutes: Book 1, ed. by John T. McNeil (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), p. 192. Ibid. 184–185. Ibid. 195–196. See Paul Helm, John Calvin’s Ideas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), chap. 5. Herein, Helm persuasively defends the notion that Calvin affirms substance dualism closely aligned with both Augustine and Plato. Paul Helm, Calvin at the Centre (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), chap. 2. Paul Helm argues for the coherence of uniting Cartesianism with Reformation theology. He argues that Cartesianism could provide the metaphysical underpinnings for Reformation theology because of the similarities among Descartes, Augustine, and Calvin. Here he is relying on the research of Stephen Menn in Descartes and Augustine. See Clement of Alexandria, Stromata V, chapter XII-XIII. Origen of Alexandria, On First Principles, 2.6–2.9., in Ante-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, second series (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996). Also see Athanasius, ‘Against the Heathen’ in Ian A. McFarland (ed.), Creation and Humanity: The Sources of Christian Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), pp. 200–201. Athanasius uses similar language of soul/mind as distinct ontologically (and functionally) from the body. J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (London: A. and C. Black Limited, 1958), pp. 344–345.

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Part I

Cartesian souls and theological prolegomena

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1

A Cartesian exploration in natural theology and prolegomena

But that which is intelligible and without dimension is neither contracted nor dispersed, she said. Contraction and dispersal are proper to bodies. The soul, however, is equally present according to its own invisible and incorporeal nature at the aggregation of the elements into the body and at their segregation. (Saint Gregory of Nyssa, On The Soul and the Resurrection, chapter 2, 47)

In this chapter, I lay out some of what I believe to be promising lines of reasoning for understanding both humans and God as minds in the Cartesian sense. I seek to motivate a case in favour of Cartesianism as a foundation for constructive theological anthropology. To this end, I advance a version of the knowledge argument that favours Cartesian substance dualism according to which persons are at their core metaphysically simple souls (i.e. minds), which have some kind of relationship to their bodies. But, the precise relationship of the soul to the body will be taken up in forthcoming chapters.

Natural theology In the Introduction, I defined standard substance dualism as the view that an individual human is identical to the soul or the core of the human is the soul, which also has a body or functions interactively with a body. I have suggested elsewhere that this is a good place to start when thinking about theism. If we are to have any theological knowledge that gives us a foundational starting point for additional construction, then we must begin with mental beings. Assuming that God is or has a mind and is capable of communicating to humans and able to enter into personal relationships with humans, then it seems very natural to say that God is or has personal and/or mental properties that overlap with humans. In an article ‘Discovering God and Soul,’ I advance an abductive argument for the overlap of properties and/or features between God’s nature and human nature.1 I describe the soul as a sign or pointer that requires an explanation beyond it, something like Stephen Evans’ recent approach to natural theology. By way of contrast with Evans, the soul serves as a ‘sign’ that souls have access to, in addition to its ground, in a self-reflexive manner. Evans construes his project as externalist in nature rather than internalist.2 I argue that souls lack a

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sufficient explanation in physical mechanistic and inanimate causes. The soul requires a personal cause/explanation for its existence, and this cause would appear to be higher than other human causes. Furthermore, similar to Evans’ understanding of some signs in terms of ‘cosmic wonder,’ souls serve as signs for ‘transcendent wonder.’3 Unsurprisingly, an adequate explanation for a soul is God. In this way, like Descartes the soul is the medium by which we come to know of God and the most fundamental thing we can say about God would seem to be that he is a mind like human minds. In virtue of our having knowledge of persons as souls and that those souls bear certain features, if the world bears similar features or marks reflective of souls, then a probable explanation for the world full of souls would be a personal agent that is a soul/immaterial being. Here, I cite the argument. 1

2

3

4

5

6 7

8

9

If I have direct access to my nature as a simple immaterial being that bears one pure immaterial property, and other beings bear marks or features in similar ways, then it is likely these other beings are simple immaterial beings with complex abilities and properties. I have direct access to my nature as a simple immaterial being that bears one pure immaterial property (given introspection, an enduring I-concept, and self-presenting properties); and other beings, namely human beings, bear marks or features in similar ways found in premise 2 (given the principle of credulity or phenomenal conservatism).4 Therefore, it is likely that human beings (on the basis of the principle of charity/credulity) are simple immaterial beings with complex and abstract mental abilities (from premises 1–3; modus ponens). If it is likely that human persons are mental simples with abstract and complex properties and there is not a suitable naturalistic explanation for this, then the likely metaphysical explanation is a mental Being (some call God) with abstract and complex abilities. There is no naturalistic explanation for this. Therefore, the likely metaphysical explanation for human persons is a mental Being (some call God) with abstract and complex abilities (from premises 4–6, modus ponens). By logical extension, assuming there is a cause behind humans and the natural world, we have reason (principle of credulity) to think this Being is like human beings because the physical world bears marks or features of a Being with complex and abstract mental abilities (premises 1–3), Therefore, we have good reason to think that the physical world points to a Being with a mental nature like human beings and the natures they have, which comprises a personal paradigm explanation. This Being is often referred to as God.

Consider the first premise. I take it that I am an immaterial substance bearing at least one property or feature that is instantiated by the soul (i.e. immaterial

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19

substance) and is not owned by the body. It may be possible that a soul is spatial in some sense, but it is likely not spatially extended bearing the same kinds of properties we assume of bodies where bodies are extended and have mass and other empirically verifiable properties. Attending to my mental states, it becomes plain that I as a thing with mental states am just different from my body. It is certainly true to say that I own my body and have personal experiences of the world in and through my body, but strictly speaking I am not body – at least not essentially so. I am distinct from my body, which seems to be basic upon reflection. In terms of my own phenomenal experiences of the body, I readily make an intuitive assumption that I am not identical to my body. I can reflect on various parts of my body as distinct objects of my own first-person awareness and see that they are not identical to me. There is not one gardenvariety material object (where material things are publically accessible objects of spatial extension that are non-thinking) that adequately describes or makes sense of who I am. I seem to be something different, which is justified by my persistence through time and space. In contrast to the body, I persist through time and space. I persist as a subject through time. Reflecting on the experience of my writing this section of A Cartesian Exploration, I realize that I existed yesterday to today as I enter into the next few seconds, minutes, and hours of my life. At some point in time, my body does not seem to persist as wholly the same object whereas I do. Furthermore, I exist at differing spatial locations in my body. As I experience my body, I can directly focus on differing parts of my body through my thinking and through my control over the parts of my body. To reflect on the various parts of my body that I control, I naturally make a distinction between who I am in relation to my body. Thus, I intuitively believe that I am not my body. Instead, I am the kind of thing that thinks and experiences. I am something other than a material object; I am an immaterial object that has first-person consciousness. I experience the world from my own vantage point. And, as I experience the world I do so as a subject that owns my individual and distinct thoughts, emotions, and beliefs at different times. Yet, at every moment if we are to assume actual continuity of the subject that is also distinct from its body, then we must assume that there is at least one property that is pure and distinct from the properties of the body. This property is the first-person property. And, such a property is foundational to all experience, which is rooted in an immaterial entity. As an immaterial entity, I have complex mental abilities to achieve abstract thinking. I am able to discriminate between various objects perceptible to my experience. When I am presented with the option of choosing between an apple and an orange to eat, I can recall what both taste like. Then, I can determine which of the fruit I desire the most and proceed to making a choice. Transitioning to other human beings is a natural inference to the best explanation. If I am to be charitable to others, then I have good reason, based upon the complex effects like their movements and verbal communication, to conclude that they have the ability to cognize and discriminate about options. Like me they too have complex mental abilities (premises 2–4).

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Moving from human persons to God or the causal agent behind the natural world is related, but a somewhat different issue (premises 5–7). The difficulty is that God or another Divine-agent is not embodied like humans are embodied, so we cannot posit precisely the same accounting.5 However, while this being does not seem to have a body, it does bear marks in and through the natural order similar to humans bearing marks in their natural bodies. Furthermore, the natural world bears marks and features that reflect an agent/being that has a mental nature (i.e. one that is a simple immaterial being with complex/abstract functioning). A mental/personal God would seem to provide a more rational explanation for the universe bearing marks of personal agency than other alternatives, like naturalism for instance. Not only does this agent bear marks of having generic causal powers that brought the natural world into existence, which we know through a cosmological argument for the existence of a Being. This agent bears marks of being the kind of being that must discriminate between options (i.e. an individual mind with complex/abstract mental functioning). It seems that through a variation of the Design argument or a Fine-tuning argument, we have evidence that suggests not merely generic causal agency (i.e. a pantheistic being of a sort), but a Being with a mental nature resembling human nature.6 We have here an argument beyond generic theism pointing in the direction of a personal Designer, as we find with the Christian portrayal of God. Once again, this moves beyond many natural theology arguments to a richer concept of God. I take it that the natural world bears features of a mental agent with complex and abstract reasoning abilities.7 Fine-tuning arguments for the existence of God bear this out. Fine-tuning arguments for the existence of a supernatural being (i.e. God) come in three forms, namely, the fine-tuning of the laws of nature, the constants of nature, and the initial conditions of the universe. I consider the first, namely, laws of nature. A Being with discriminatory abilities is required to account for the laws of nature in relation necessary for an embodied being (such as human beings) to exist and have a relation to the soul depends. An example of fine-tuning would include gravity, which is that attractive force between physical objects. Gravity increases in strength proportionate to the masses of objects and wanes with the distance between objects. This longstanding force must remain constant for human brains to develop in evolution and for sustaining minds. Gravity, alone, in all of its manifestations is highly specified and unique to the natural world we live in. Arguably, the best explanation for this occurrence in the natural world is a personal being having complex and abstract mental functioning (granted this Being has greater powers than humans) able to design the world in such a way as to allow complex life to evolve.8 The uniqueness that the natural world reflects is not only inexplicable in terms of material processes alone, but is unquantifiable in mathematical terms. Uniqueness (as a value) is a feature that is relevant and explicable in terms of persons not in terms of physical processes. Furthermore, consider the design of conscious beings to come to exist in and through evolutionary processes. This too requires a personal being with a mental nature that has intentions and is able to discriminate, devise a plan, and put it into motion.9

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Naturalism provides no solution for human minds/souls, so the most likely explanation would be theism. I propose that the world does, in fact, bear marks of agency similar to humans. The criterion I advance is what I call discriminatory abilities, which finds support in the fine-tuning of the universe and the unique relationship that obtains between minds and bodies. Accordingly, there are physical effects that seem to require a personal explanation. Personal agency finds an adequate grounding in a being that has complex and abstract mental functioning. Thus, if God is the causal agent behind the physical world that sustains the world and human souls, then he must be the kind of being that has discriminatory abilities. If this is the case, then there is good reason to believe that this being is a soul/immaterial substance that bears a pure mental property like humans. The present argument grounds a natural intuition/assumption about the paradigm of souls and the physical world grounded in an immaterial God.

Theistic dualism Theistic dualism is a term that refers to God in relationship to the whole world. It is not intended as a negative term to suggest that God is good and the physical creation he has created is bad, but to highlight the ontological difference between the two. In this broad ontological framework, we have a paradigm for thinking about both God and souls. Given that God is an immaterial mental being distinct from physical things, we have a framework in which to situate other souls. Theistic dualism, then, is a way of looking at the world.

Why natural theology, theistic dualism, and the soul Presently, there is an inclination among analytic philosophers and theologians toward relational and participatory ontologies of persons.10 However, as I consider substantive views of persons in A Cartesian Exploration, I show that there are reasons for affirming a substantive view as foundational to relational participatory views. My goal here is to motivate the discussion by offering reasons in support of substance dualist ontology as it pertains to human persons. I define strong participatory ontologies as those ontologies in theology that begin with relations and personalism. Personalism is characteristically described as existential in nature insofar as persons cannot be understood apart from the relations they enter into. In this way, persons are only understood in terms of the community they exist within. According to these strong relational/ participatory ontologies, we cannot analytically define persons. However, I think we should understand persons as conscious and volitional beings. Relations themselves only make sense if substances make sense. What seems upon reflection to be basic to our understanding of persons is that persons are mental and immaterial beings capable of thought, capable of making choices, and, in the case of humans these kinds of persons are related to a hunk of matter. The notion that persons are conscious and volitional beings is basic to further reflection on God.

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I believe the definition given here is a plausible one. Persons are mental and/ or immaterial substances. We know this from a basic and pre-philosophical analysis of self. I come to know who I am directly through my conscious internal states that presuppose a unity of being, and I am distinct from other beings with which I enter into a relationship. One might wish to describe the view as Cartesian personalism, but the reader must clearly distinguish it from stronger variations of personalism where persons are not at rock-bottom substances but composed of relations. J.P. Moreland supports some variation of the substantive approach to human persons. He argues that all relational views have obvious ontological commitments to the structural features of humans that make them capable of representing God. Relational theories require substantial individuals. Moreland claims, There are two ways to accomplish such functionalization. First, the image of God can be taken in the representative sense according to which humankind was made to represent God in his activity of ruling on the earth on God’s behalf. Second, the image can be taken in the relational sense according to which it is constituted by certain interpersonal relationships with God and other persons. It should be obvious that either approach presupposes the ontological understanding. Something can represent God in the way just specified only if it has certain powers and attributes apt for carrying out the appropriate representational activities. And an entity can stand in certain relations and not others depending on the kind of thing the entity is, and an entity flourishes in certain relations and not others depending on the sort of thing it is.11 Moreland’s argument is clear in that all relations and functions depend upon an entity or a substance of a particular kind. The same is true of human persons and their relationship to God. There is something basic about the kinds of things persons are (including God, assuming he is a person), namely, that persons are immaterial beings with mental properties capable of performing mental and volitional acts. All relations and functions seem to depend upon relata. Assuming God is a person like we are persons, and we have access to God as such, then it would seem that God is not only a substance but also a mental substance.

A distinctly substance dualist approach to theological anthropology For the above reasons, I do not think relational approaches to humans should be one’s starting point. Instead, we must begin with a substantive approach. We ought to approach the Divine and human, fundamentally, from the perspective of minds. You may see this central fixture as an Augustinian, Neo-Platonic, or a Cartesian distinctive of a natural theology of persons (using these philosophies loosely as a term of art) because the immaterial and the mental are central for

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understanding something basic about persons in relation to reality. At the very base of our understanding of all persons, including God is the notion of a mental property-bearer, if we are to have any grip on God and are able to apply positive descriptions to God.12 David Lund offers an overview of substance dualism and its vital role in our understanding of God, God is the proper name of a personal being. Personhood seems to be an essential part of the concept, at least as it is understood in the theistic religions of the West… the concept before us is that of a conscious being who experiences the kinds of high-level mental states that persons experience. The concept is compatible with the possibility that the mind of God transcends our own in ways we cannot comprehend, but it must remain grounded in our experience of what it is to have a mind and to be a person. Without this experiential base we could have no concept of what it could be for God to be a personal being or to have the mental states we, implicitly or explicitly, attribute to Him.13 In other words, according to Lund, we seem to have conscious access to God and this is in keeping with the Western notion of the Christian God. In using the term ‘God’ as a proper name, we assume that there is positive and descriptive content that applies to God.14 I realize this is a somewhat controversial claim, but it seems basic to any knowledge of God. According to Lund, we can adequately conceive of God and speak of God in terms of mentality and personhood. Without it, we would have no conceptual grip on knowing God. Richard Swinburne, another substance dualist, has argued in a similar fashion by stating, ‘That God is personal in the sense of having beliefs (of a certain complexity) and being able to perform intentional actions (of a certain complexity) is the common understanding of Western religion.’15 The intuitive notion that God and persons are fundamentally mental property-bearers seems true and basic to all theological reflection throughout Church history (hence, a paradigm for beginning to think about God in relation to other persons and minds).16 Minimally, there is a fitting relation between God and human persons that constitutes a foundation for thinking about persons, generally within person-body substance dualism (PBSD) and the Plato‑Augustine‑Descartes tradition. For the reasons discussed above, I am interested in establishing a Christian view of human persons from substance dualist ontology.

Alterity theism or personal theism Some have objected to substance dualist ontology as an adequate ontology for theology on the basis that it gives us a picture of God which is illicit and inappropriate. Some have referred to substance dualist theology as a form of ‘theological personalism’ where God is a person just like you and I are persons. Substance dualists like Swinburne and Plantinga are often charged with

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advancing a reductionist view of God.17 This has often been called ‘personal theism.’ Alternatively, one might call this view of God ‘immanent theism.’ The picture of God in relation to humans here is one where God is a person/agent among other persons/agents. According to the traditional Christian picture of God this is, strictly speaking, inappropriate because God is not a person, even if he is personal.18 This is the view that God is above human agency. In fact, God causally transcends all created and finite agents – including human agents. In some sense, God both transcends and is present to his creation. As such, this view could be called ‘alterity theism.’ There are two issues deserving further consideration. First, is the notion that substance dualist ontology yields a picture of God as one agent among other agents. Although this is a common objection advanced against substance dualists, it is not entirely clear that this picture is necessary. The second issue is whether or not such a picture of God is illicit and inaccurate. Both of these topics are worthwhile research projects. One should at this point affirm substance dualist ontology concerning human agents and hold that there is some seeming overlap between human persons/ minds and God as a personal mind. One could still affirm ‘alterity theism’ in accordance with a traditional picture of God’s relation to the world without falling into ‘personal theism’ by accepting a similarity between God, as a mind, and other minds (that exists with a complexity and plurality within his being) by utilizing the doctrine of analogy. While there is this natural affinity between souls and God, more evidence is required for actually believing we are metaphysically simple souls distinct from our bodies. To this we turn.

A philosophical defence of Cartesian souls We have good reasons for assuming substance dualist ontology as providing the foundations for thinking about God. Along the lines I have laid out, substance dualist ontology has a natural affinity with Christian theism where God is a mental and a person(al) being. In what remains, I wish to lay out some philosophical arguments for affirming a Cartesian soul.19 Consider the following well-known thought experiment originally proposed by Frank Jackson. Mary is a brilliant scientist living in a black and white room who has studied colour, the physics of light, its relation to colour, and neurophysiology. Yet she has never experienced the colour red. When she steps out of her black and white room, she experiences the colour red. At this point, she exclaims: ‘I see red.’ At the point that she sees red it is argued that she gains a new concept/ mental item of knowledge that is distinct from her knowledge of red prior to seeing red. Accordingly, we know that there is a duality in Mary’s knowledge: one that derives from a posteriori as it concerns a new item of knowledge and one that is a priori as it concerns a presupposed item(s) of knowledge.20 We also know that concepts are distinct from propositions.21 While propositions can exist on their own mind-independently, our concepts seem to be

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mind-dependent and internal to the knower. It is also arguable that the nature of the self can be naturally inferred from this. If there is a duality of knowledge/ concepts, then one might say there is a duality of things that these concepts are conferred upon or dependent upon. And, if this is a natural inference to draw, then we do know at least one thing about the nature of the thing having knowledge/concepts, namely that it is the kind of thing that is able to know and think. Chisholm has argued for the mode or presentation of mental properties. He says that there are two properties distinct with every piece of knowledge or concept. Those properties include the thing directly in the purview of one’s perceptual states and the self as presented with the perceptual state. The property of presentation or consciousness he calls ‘self-presenting properties.’22 I shall call the concept that follows from this the I-concept. This is the concept that we have of ourselves directly, and immediately attending all other concepts and properties in light of the property of the object presenting itself to the self. When Mary sees red, she knows not only red, but also that she sees red or at least upon reflection she can know that she sees red. Knowledge and subject-hood seem to be foundational to the knowledge of red and everything else. Thus, knowledge and self-consciousness is coterminus. Following from this, Mary’s experience seems not only to support the inextricable connection between mental items and minds, but also the duality of the body/brain with persons who think and have characteristics of persons. I argue that on this basis, the ‘I’ or self is a metaphysical simple distinguishable from a complex self. If I co-exist with my thoughts, then they strongly imply that my nature is an enduring continuant.23 In fact, I must be a simple enduring continuant if I am to make sense of the fact of my mental items.24 My mental items of seeing red are just that: my mental items of seeing red. This is similarly applicable to desires, sensations, and ideas, and the point is still the same that ‘I’ endure with these desires, sensations, ideas, and other mental items. This is rather unlike propositions. There may be such a thing as propositions that are objective, nonsubjective, and not dependent on the mind – it seems in fact that there are. Mental items are different. Propositions can be shared among individuals, whereas perceptions or concepts cannot. First-person observers can verify propositions, yet concepts are internally knowable by individual first-person knowers. Although mental items correlate, at times, with neural activity, concepts are not empirically known through some third-person manner of enquiry. Thus, material things do not know red, but I do. It seems upon reflection that concepts are this way and are intimately related to the ‘I’ having them. Both material things and property-bundle things do not have the persistence conditions to account for my having the property of co-existing with all my concepts/mental items. Pace Hume, there has been this notion that there is no subject present (i.e. the bundle theory), but this defies common sense, introspection, and the fact that sensations are bound and unified by something.25 Thus, if I am to be of the sort to have these kinds of mental items/concepts, then I am probably a simple thing and not a material thing or composed of a

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material thing. A simple (arguably, a Cartesian soul or PBSD) best accounts for the I-concept and excludes the composite or complex person. The evidence against a property-bundle view is great. First, if one considers the unity-of-consciousness argument, namely, the notion that a person’s conscious field of awareness is unified and singular then we have reason to think that a bundle view cannot account for this – but instead requires a subject of experience. Bundles do not have the tight unity reflective of our conscious mental states. Bundles of properties lack the internal depth characteristic of a conscious field.26 Bundles of properties lack the intrinsic relation between things and properties that are reflective of the conscious field. Most important, bundles cannot be simple. Second, as reflected above, concepts and conscious states of awareness are had by something and accessible by something – this might be called the privileged access argument, offered by Richard Swinburne.27 He argues that mental events, as in the cases above when Mary sees red, are mental properties that are accessible only by substances. Given that mental properties are nonmaterial, it would seem to require a non-material entity to gain access to them. Material things do not have access to certain facets of the world like qualia-red.28 The knowledge argument reveals property dualism, but there is also something deeper, which is that the self as a substance has access to that which is not physical. Third, a bundle of material and/or immaterial properties will not do because of the close relation between concepts and conceivers, as discussed briefly above. Bundles do not have ownership of things the way a mental thing has ownership of a concept. Bundles may have relational connections or causal connections, but they seem to lack internal and intrinsic depth. Mental substances seem to have an intimate and internal relation to concepts/mental items. If it is not a property-bundle thing, then I suggest it is unlikely that a compound is the kind of thing to have access to mental items/concepts. It seems that it is a pure substance unlike the material. At this point, one might respond and suggest that there is no obvious reason to reject property dualism as an option on the table. That may be. However, there are two features that comprise the I-concept that are, minimally, more at home with substance dualism. First, there is this notion that it is the immaterial thing doing the thinking not the material thing. If we were to assume that this immaterial thing has powers whereby s/he can access his/her mental ideas immediately at will, then this would not seem to cohere with property dualism whereby we have a thing that happens to have higher-order properties of a mental sort without that thing actually being an immaterial property-bearer. Second, one of the features of the I-concept is the simple feature of the self that is present in the purview of the substance accessing his/her own mental states. Connected to the above, the experience of knowledge/mental items as simple, irreducible to the physical and intrinsically non-physical in conjunction with self-presenting properties seems to yield a metaphysical simple. If concepts are simple, intrinsically non-physical, and dependent on the person/mind, then it

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seems natural to infer as one did above that persons are simple because of a singular binding thing that unifies that which can be experienced in a mental state/concept. As shown above, it seems that ‘I’ attend every mental item/ concept and I unify these states. What might be the lines of evidence for such a conclusion? It has been argued that the nature of mental items/concepts is an alteration or mode of the mind, thus not a part of the mind. If this is the case that the conscious experience of concepts are non-composed and simple, then it makes sense to think that there is a simple non-composed ‘I’ that has those thoughts, assuming self-presenting properties and the ‘I’ that attends the mental items. This ‘I’ generates thoughts that are sui generis in nature. It is not that when new concepts come into the mind that I am somehow added to or subtracted from in the sense of how material things can be added to or subtracted. When I have a new concept in mind, it is not like that of an organism that might take on the addition of a limb or the subtraction of a limb. Mental items do not seem to work that way. Considering the difference between propositions and concepts, it is not as if I am adding a proposition from the abstract realm to my mind. Concepts do not come from anywhere else but my mind, sui generis.29 Sui generis things are deeply foundational, new, and simple in nature. The phenomenology of my mental items is deeply dependent on me not anything else, and if there is a pure mental property to be had it seems it is had by a pure immaterial thing because the pure property is had by a thing and the characteristics of that thing resemble a simple immaterial thing not a material thing – thus we have a pure or simple mental subject.30 The property I have access to is the property that is instantiated by a pure mental subject. In order to bring out this intuition more clearly we could draw from Descartes’ useful thought experiment. I saw that while I could conceive that I had no body … I could not conceive that I was not. On the other hand, if I had only ceased from thinking … I should have no reason for thinking that I had existed. From this, I knew that I was a substance the whole nature or essence of which is to think and that for its existence there is no need of any place, nor does it depend on any material thing.31 If I can conceive of a situation like the one on offer by Descartes, then it provides good evidence for my being a simple immaterial thing that does not supervene upon the body. Having said this, I have access immediately and directly to a property of the subject and what is characteristic of this subject is that its fundamental nature is not physical. Hence, property dualism does not seem to be the best explanation for our psychology because mental properties in themselves do not have causal power and cannot exist on their own. Therefore it is natural to say that I am a simple soul that accounts for the I-concept not a property-bundle, not a material thing, and not a tertium quid comprising a complex set of parts.

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The conscious state of being aware of concepts is such that it cannot be broken down into further component parts. Consider the concept of phenomenal red when I see red, once again. It is not merely that when the mental event ‘I see red’ happens that it can then be destroyed because of its necessarily being fixed in the past, but there is something else that is fixed and necessary about its nature when it occurs as a mental event. The phenomenology of my experiencing red is such that the event is necessarily tied to me in a way that defies analysis and complexity of parts. This cannot be divided into component parts that are experienced in the mental item. While I might experience red as instantiated in the flower, in a field of green on a bright sunny day, this in-and-of-itself does not nullify the simplicity of the nature of the mental event itself. The various parts/ objects within my mental or perceptual state cannot undermine the simplicity of the mental item/event. The above notion that my conscious state is simple ties into the unity of consciousness argument for substance dualism that when I experience red I do so in one unified field of awareness.32 The debate on the issue reduces to a debate over whether a thing can be a complex that is composed of simpler parts and is extended, or whether experiential awareness requires a simple thing. This debate is complicated, and, as such, I will not enter into all of the intricacies of the debate directly here, but given what I argue above there is reason to think that personal agents are metaphysically simple.33 Arguably, the soul/self is the metaphysical glue for the experience of concepts and the unity of conscious mental states.34 If the reasons I gave above do in fact support this view of a metaphysically simple/immaterial self as soul, then it appears that we have a foundation for exploring the viability of Cartesianism in theology. Connected to this foundation, I have briefly advanced reasons for assuming a kind of Theistic dualism and a paradigm of persons that includes both God and humans, which motivates a ground for constructing a Cartesian view with Christian theology. In the next chapter, I advance some reasons for thinking Cartesianism provides a ground for understanding the narrative of the Christian Scriptures.

Notes 1 Farris, Joshua R., ‘Discovering God and Soul: A Reassessment and Appreciation for Cartesian Natural Theology,’ Philosophia Christi vol. 16 no. 1 (Summer 2014), 37–57. Portions of the following are drawn from this work. 2 See Evans, C. Stephen, Natural Signs and Knowledge of God: A New Look at Theistic Arguments (Oxford: OUP, 2010), 26–39. René Descartes advances something like this notion that deserves additional attention in his Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, trans. Donald Cress (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1980; 3r, Meditations III. ‘God, in creating me, implanted this idea in me, so that it would be like the mark of the craftsman stamped on his work.’ 3 See Natural Signs and Knowledge of God, 60–64. 4 See Swinburne, Richard, Mind, Brain, and Free Will (Oxford: OUP, 2013), chapter 3 on ‘Epistemology,’ section 2. 5 However, mind and body interaction could serve as an analogy for Divine interaction with the world.

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6 Variations of ‘supernaturalism’ might not provide the best hypothesis for explaining the data (e.g. an impersonal Being). 7 Stephen H. Webb advances an interesting case for a material God, and suggests that starting with matter provides the theologian with a base to attribute perfections to God. See Webb, Stephen H., Jesus Christ, Eternal God: Heavenly Flesh and The Metaphysics of Matter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), see especially pp. 21–25. Why not start thinking of God as matter or, at least, bearing material as one property? By way of preface, I must say that the present chapter is not a thorough treatment of engagement with Webb’s thought provoking project, which will require focused attention in another context. However, a few brief remarks are in order. First, to suggest the thesis that God or other persons are material beings is, as I have shown, not the common sense position. I will grant that at times common sense is insufficient as a starting point in our epistemology, but that is only if we have a good reason to reject it. Second, this is not a natural intuition to make about God given tradition and what we seem to know about the material world in contrast to immaterial beings. This is something Webb points out himself on p. 20. Webb affirms the idea that conceiving of God as an immaterial being is a natural intuition because all doctrinal ideas, to some extent, have philosophical conditions and are developed in and out of historical contexts. To see God as anything other than a Platonic or baptised Aristotelian God would require revisiting the tradition and reconceiving what comes natural. Herein, he is drawing from Lindbeck, George A., The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1984), chap. 4. My third reason for rejecting Webb’s thesis is that I have already established that we are souls based on several arguments, which provides for us a paradigm for thinking about other souls and persons. Furthermore, if God exhibits certain characteristics as human persons, and human persons are immaterial at their core, then God too is immaterial at his core. The question then is whether or not God has a body. 8 See Collins, Robin, The Teleological Argument (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 211–212. 9 See Moreland, J.P., The Argument from Consciousness (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). Moreland does a good job laying out some of the evidence. I have relied on the evidence for the world bearing marks of agency and pointing to God from my article ‘Discovering God and Soul.’ 10 For a recent and compelling defence of the notion that human persons are fundamentally composed of relations, see Chappell, Timothy, ‘Knowledge of Persons,’ in European Journal of Philosophy of Religion, Special Issue: The Second-Personal in the Philosophy of Religion, ed. by Andrew Pinsent and Eleonore Stump, vol. 5, no. 4 (2013), 3–29. 11 Moreland, J., The Recalcitrant Imago Dei: Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism (London: SCM Press, 2009). 12 We seem to have a paradigm concept of persons, including God, which is an immaterial substance. Alvin Plantinga assumes something like this with respect to Christian theism. See Plantinga, Alvin, ‘Materialism and Christian Belief’, in Persons: Human and Divine, ed. by Peter van Inwagen and Dean Zimmerman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 118–119. See also J.P. Moreland, ‘A Conceptualist argument for a spiritual substantial soul’, in Religious Studies, vol. 49 (2013): 35–43. Herein, Moreland assumes that we do have a paradigmatic concept of persons (including God). Specifically, he argues that if we are material beings then it is not possible to have a positive concept of God given that he is a spirit, yet it seems that we do have a concept of God in terms of minds. Although Moreland affirms a variation of Thomism, many of his assumptions are Cartesian in nature. 13 Lund, David, Making Sense of It All: An Introduction to Philosophical Inquiry, 2nd edn (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2003), p. 93.

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14 Contrast this with the approach to God as a title. 15 Swinburne, Richard, The Christian God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), pp. 126–127. 16 I have argued something like this in more detail in the following article. See Farris, Joshua, ‘Discovering God and Soul: A Re-Appraisal and Appreciation for Cartesian Natural Theology’, in the Ramified Natural Theology Project in Philosophia Christi, vol. 16, no. 1 (2014). Herein, I put forward that we have natural theology in terms of substance dualism (within the Cartesian tradition broadly speaking). 17 See Insole, Christopher, The Realist Hope: A Critique of Anti-Realist Approaches in Contemporary Philosophical Theology (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 148–160. Insole advances an insightful critique of modern natural theology and contemporary apophaticism where he cites Swinburne as an example of just the kind of reasoning listed above. 18 Davies, Brian, An Introduction to Philosophy of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 9–15. I was reminded of this name, theological personalism, from Brian Davies, but he did not come up with this understanding. 19 I make a similar argument in ‘The Soul-Concept: Meaningfully Disregard or Meaningfully Embrace,’ Annales Philosophici, issue 5 (December 2012): pp. 59–68. 20 The reality is that scientific knowledge requires and presupposes a first-person knower. 21 See Jackson, Frank, From Metaphysics to Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). 22 See Chisholm, Roderick, Theory of Knowledge, 3rd edn (Englewood Cliff: PrenticeHall, 1989), pp. 18–25; The First Person (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981), pp. 79–83. 23 I do not wish to enter a debate over perdurantism or endurantism. I assume this based on the way that it seems to me. Endurantism is the common-sense position and with respect to my thoughts it seems that I persist and I do not seem to perdure. For a useful defence, see Markosian, Ned, ‘A Defense of Presentism,’ in Persistence: Contemporary Readings (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: The MIT Press, 2006), chap. 17. 24 One could argue in favour of stage theory and say that these memories are ‘apparent’ memories but not real memories. This seems to defy common sense, but, nonetheless it is another way of accounting for the data. However, given common sense, I take it that we do have an obvious reason for affirming the truthfulness that I endure. 25 There is some empirical evidence to buttress this with respect to scientific studies and scientific work is presupposed by it. For one example see Goetz, Stewart and Baker, Mark C., eds, The Soul Hypothesis: Investigations into the Existence of the Soul (New York: Continuum, 2011), see especially chaps 1, 5, 6, and 7. 26 Hence the problem with mereologically arranged aggregates that have externally related parts cobbled together. 27 Richard Swinburne, ‘From Mental/Physical Identity to Substance Dualism,’ see especially pp. 151–165. Mental events and physical events are distinct according to Swinburne in terms of a thing having access to the mind and a physical thing described according to extension and physics. I am not inclined to see along with Swinburne the idea that mental/soul substances exist only when presently having the property of accessing the internal. I believe the thinking thing/substance still exists and still bears, at minimum, one property. 28 Quale is a universal property for the experience of physical objects. Qualia require an experiencing subject. 29 On a traditional realist understanding, propositions really exist as mind-independent and as abstract. As such, propositions can be instantiated in concrete individuals as concepts. Yet, while the proposition is still one, a concept takes on a distinct characteristic from the individual subject. 30 See John Foster in The Immaterial Self: A Defence of the Cartesian Dualist Conception of the Mind. See Richard Swinburne, The Evolution of the Soul, p. 157, for a

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defence of this. I develop it a bit differently here and explore some of the implications a bit further within the I-concept. Rene Descartes, Discourse on the Method, trans. by E.S. Haldane and G.R.T. Ross in Collected Works of Descartes, I, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), p. 101. A famous argument used by Aristotle, Descartes, and Kant to name a few. Also see William Hasker’s useful discussion in The Emergent Self (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), pp. 122–135. I am convinced that there is literally one thing, simple, indivisible, and without parts. Interestingly, there are two essays where the authors argue for a unified self, yet one argues in favour of a simple self and the other a unified self yet not a metaphysical simple. See David Barnett, ‘You are Simple,’ and William Hasker, in ‘Persons and the Unity of Consciousness,’ The Waning of Materialism, ed. by R.C. Koons and Georg Bealer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), see chaps 7 and 8. Also see Joshua R. Farris, ‘Substance Dualism and Theological Anthropology: A Theological Argument for a Simple view of Persons,’ in Philosophy and Theology, vol. 27, issue 1 (2015), pp. 107–126. Lynne Rudder Baker uses the term ‘metaphysical glue’ in Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 163. She uses it in reference to the first-person perspective, which is odd because in her view a mind is not properly speaking a pure substance with the persistence conditions necessary for uniting conscious mental states. The first-person perspective is an impure substance, and a higher-order property instantiated in the physical substance. However as I have argued, it is better to see the ‘what’ as an immaterial thing that is doing something uncharacteristic of material things.

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A Cartesian exploration of Scripture and personal ontology

At the resurrection, then, when human nature will be transformed into an immortal nature, the transformation will be in the inner quality of the human being. Both body and soul will be changed, but the change will be constituted by a divinely wrought modification of the soul. (Peter Burnell, The Augustinian Person, p. 42)

In this chapter, I argue that mind-body dualism of the Cartesian variety provides a ground for the Scriptural narrative of humans as images of God.1 I argue that the polarizing assumption between substance and its relations or functions tends to treat these views as dichotomous when in fact they are not (i.e. a false dichotomy) and such an issue is often central to the rejection of substance dualism. Instead an immaterial substantive view has the resources to capture the data from Scripture. Leaving the discussion of prolegomena here would be insufficient however. To this point, I have advanced a defence of Cartesianism, broadly speaking, without addressing its considerable diversity. At the end of the chapter, I lay out more clearly the Cartesian variations on offer, which will help facilitate discussions I take up later on in A Cartesian Exploration. I believe that we have, at minimum, three ways to parse out Cartesianism, which provide the theologian with additional resources for contemporary reflection.

Scriptural narrative and human beings2 Let us work through the categories of the Scriptural narrative, I propose to give some answer to the metaphysical pre-conditions for understanding human persons from Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Glory. I argue that humans are enduring, capable of change, and indivisible to account for the narrative on human beings. I do not argue definitively for the conclusion of substance dualism, but I show that it provides a plausible accounting for the data. Along the way, I offer some reasons for thinking that other anthropological models are insufficient groundings for the data. In the recent philosophical-theological literature, Jerry L. Walls argues for a relational ontology that complements the argument I give for soul substance as

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the ground of relations. That is, his view, explained in his recent work, Heaven: The Logic of Eternal Joy, is commensurate with a substantive view of the imago Dei having both stative and dynamic realities or teleological properties. Walls’ initial defence of substance ontology and his conjoining substance ontology in connection with relational ontology concerning the ‘image’ is especially interesting. While Walls argues for substance dualism at the beginning of his work,3 he thereafter, in the context of the Trinity, argues in favour of a relational ontology regarding personal identity and the imago Dei. Substance ontology focuses on what a thing is internally, while relational ontology places emphasis on external and accidental relations. Thus, the two ontological descriptions are distinct. In the context of further elaborating personal identity, Walls moves to a relational ontology because of the perceived connection between the imago Dei and the Trinity; however, relational accounts of persons and the ‘image’ depend upon a property-bearer. Minimally, this property-bearer (namely, a simple immaterial part) metaphysically accounts for these relational dynamics. Maximally, this property-bearer is identical to the ‘image,’ which finds expression in relational contexts. Walls explicitly affirms a relational view when he says, ‘The discussion of this section reveals that our individual identity is finally a relational matter. Who we are is defined by our relationships with others.’4 Walls later states, only substances with certain given powers and potentialities can relate to each other in the ways we have been considering. Thus, the relational account of identity complements and provides depth and texture to the ontological account of identity I discussed earlier in this chapter.5 It is difficult to determine whether Walls is holding to a substantive ontology and a substantive view of the imago Dei or a relational ontology and a relational view of the imago Dei. On the surface, he explicitly affirms a relational view of the ‘image.’ Having said this, there is something insightful about his move. As I stated above, both functional, and relational views have a place in fleshing out our understanding of the self. Both views reveal more about the substance/person and his potentiality, all the while giving ontological priority to the substance. That is to say that relational dynamics require metaphysical pre-requisites. The reality of the matter is that we can have relationships with God and other human persons in virtue of who we are. This is intrinsic not merely extrinsic and directly available to one’s first-person experience of the self. Richard Mouw advances a view similar to that found in Wall’s discussion. He argues for a particular philosophical anthropology in relationship to the image of God. His emphasis upon the essentials of a Christian philosophical anthropology and what is needed for the imago Dei are particularly insightful. Richard Mouw suggests that it is not so much the properties that are identical with the image of God but rather the appropriate properties that actualize the image. He explains,

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Cartesian souls and theological prolegomena I argued earlier that it would not do simply to equate the image with the possession of such things as a soul or free will or rationality. Instead, we need to ask what properties of that order are necessary in a human being if that being is to actualize the functional-relational roles and actions associated with the divine call to engage in covenant partnerships.6

The capacities of free will and rationality, arguably, already depend upon a simple immaterial entity that has a first-person perspective and is present at each phase of physical existence. While Mouw does not intend to elaborate a particular view of the image, he does lay the groundwork for moving in a particular direction, namely, to establish the appropriate conditions for the imago Dei along relational and functional lines whereby the image is a representation tied to covenant partnership in doing actions we were called to do. In short, Mouw argues in favour of substance dualism to account for the theological data whereby the immaterial substance gives rise to the capacities that actualize the ‘image.’ I believe that Mouw’s move is cogent in that it recognizes the substantial nature that is necessarily presupposed in relational and functional views. The view I put forth is able to give a metaphysical accounting of the imago Dei that is essentialist in nature and grounded in an immaterial human soul. By extension, this satisfies the holistic and immutable nature of the imago Dei that is portrayed in Scripture. Again, the significance of Wall’s and Mouw’s move is that the ‘image’ has certain metaphysical pre-requisites. Their arguments show that a (soul) substance is required for making sense of relational and functional views.

Persons as stable and dynamic images Historically, many theologians associate the metaphysical notions of stability and dynamicity with the biblical terminology of ‘image’ and ‘likeness.’7 The philosophical notion of a stable substantial thing, on some interpretations, was captured in the Biblical term ‘image’ that referred to those substantial capacities in man: rationality, freedom of the will, etc. The biblical term ‘likeness’ seems to capture the dynamic capacities referring to righteousness/holiness or something of the moral progression as we become more like God in his holiness. However, I am inclined to see things another way. One might argue that semantically the terms are synonyms, yet there could be slight differences in the semantic domain of each lexical word. Image might denote more of a stable identity whereas likeness denotes a more dynamic state.8 While this argument has been made, the textual warrant for this reading may be strained. It is not my purpose here to defend or reject this reading, although I am inclined to think along with Calvin that these terms are explicable with reference to Hebrew parallelism.9 My concern here is not to defend a particular view of the imago Dei, but to show that there are certain aspects of the Scriptural narrative of humans and the ‘image’ which find a grounding in a substance dualist notion of human ontology. The Scriptural portrayal of

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humans suggests that humans persist by enduring and that humans experience dynamic change. This is not to say that this is the only view that can account for the Scriptural story, but it is a plausible view worthy of further consideration.

Ecclesiastical thought on the ‘image’ as stable-dynamic In keeping with Ecclesiastical tradition, I believe we can capture the data of Scripture in a philosophically robust, complete, and comprehensive fashion. I take it that a substantive view of personhood, generally, and a soul view, specifically, captures the data of Scripture.10 The Scriptural narrative categories include Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Glory. In view of the creation of humanity, humans were created for something. Humans were created not only for something, but also humans were created to be something. As stated above with respect to functional and relational views of the imago Dei, these have a place in filling out the picture of humanity in Scripture, but they do not adequately capture the Scriptural data. Scripture portrays man as the kind of thing that shines forth God’s glory. This reflective property is more than simply an external relation (e.g. relational and functional views); rather, it is something reflected in the human person such that the whole of mankind bears the image as the product of God’s creation. I believe we see this at every point in the Scriptural narrative, which I explore in more detail below. Whilst man was created for a particular kind of work (e.g. functional view), and created to be in relationship with God and the rest of creation (e.g. relational views), s/he was created to be something. This is evident from creation. God created man in a particular way, and this has to do with substance as he is tied to humanity. When this is broached at the Fall, something happens to the substance of humans. In an attempt to reclaim what was lost at the Fall God sends his son Jesus Christ to die and in a sense re-creates man at Redemption (see John 1, Hebrews 1). Finally, an individual human is something greater in glory than who s/he was in Eden, even greater than when originally created. Although, I believe Scripture intimates that God intended this process for man’s overall development. Thus, man was to be united to Christ (some sort of ontic union, not necessarily an identity relation) to fully actualize God’s created potential in man. This is a qualitative distinction that is almost a magnification of what man already is at creation in contrast to the dampening effects of sin on man’s glory. There is still numerical identity between the soul as substance from Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Glory.

The end and purpose of humanity (transformation) The Westminster shorter catechism says that ‘man’s chief end is to glorify God, and enjoy him forever,’ suggesting that there is a stability but also suggesting a change in human nature that is representative of God’s nature eschatologically.11 I think there is a great deal of truth in this statement. Scripture speaks of this glory as a kind of end for the human through the work of Christ and in the

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human relationship to Jesus Christ. Romans 8:17, says, ‘and if children, then heirs – heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him’ (ESV)12 Christ came with the full intent of bringing glory to God, but in doing so Christ is being glorified (John 17:1). And, this is the glory that we participate in (see Jesus’ prayer to God the Father in John 17). Humanity is created to some extent with the capabilities to do just this, but there is also a sense that humans have abilities and capabilities that have not reached their full actualization until humans are united to Christ.13 Individual human nature, then, is both stable and dynamic for humans who endure as souls but come to actualize latent properties in keeping with human nature. Substances have the potential to digress, as well; such that one’s in-built human nature does not automatically lead to actualization.

Humanity, change, and the Fall At the Fall, humans fail to fulfil their full potential, among other things. In substance ontology, this failure is called privation. The individual person is still the same person and is still in the image of God, but the person has lost being (see Genesis 3). Because privation is insubstantial being, it requires being/substance to exist.14 In a sense it is a lack of being.15 It is not a constituent, part, or property. It is a limit of being. Hoffman and Rosenkrantz define privation as an insubstantial entity under substance, and illustrate its meaning by using the analogy of an orifice. An orifice is an open space. It is not a part only metaphorically a part.16 This really does make sense of the biblical data in Genesis 1:31 where ‘God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.’ All beings, including human beings are good. As a result, humans are in need of completion for while the being is good it has an insubstantial/privative malfunction after the Fall. Theologically speaking, this insubstantial/privative existence is a result of man’s free will not as a result of God’s creating some insubstantial thing or in terms of evil existing on its own, thus one can tell a story that affirms the stability and dynamic nature of the imago substance. What I have posited is a metaphysical story that makes sense of the change at the Fall that is in line with the broader Plato‑Augustine‑Descartes tradition, and coheres with a simple substance view. What I have not argued is that this story is the only metaphysical story to tell. As a result of evil, there is a need for redemption, a new creation or a re-creation.17 Here again, one can see the stable picture of man and the preconditions for the Fall: conscious beings, free will, rationality, and moral conscience, which also serves as a pointer to something else – Christ the complete image of God (2 Corinthians 4:4).18 I explore aspects of original sin and corruption in conjunction with Cartesianism in Chapter 6.

Creation, endurance, and change Thus, we can affirm and capture the data of Scripture that says that human persons are present from beginning to end. Human persons are in the image of

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God at creation, according to Genesis 1:26 and Genesis 9:6: ‘Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image’ (ESV). Human persons are the image of God after the Fall, according to 1 Corinthians 11:7; ‘For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God,’ which seems to presupposes an essentialist understanding of the ‘image.’ Additionally James 3:9 may offer an essentialist definition whereby even fallen individuals are in the ‘image,’ stating, ‘With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God’ (ESV). Change occurs in humans whereby humans become perfected as images, according to Romans 8:29: ‘For those whom he predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son’ (ESV). Human persons are also tied to Christ as the exemplar of the human race as seen in one John 3:2, where it states: ‘but we know that when he [Christ] appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is’ (ESV). In and through this change something substantial exists that endures bearing the imago Dei. I suggest the enduring ‘image’ is best explained in terms of a soul as substance, given the soul’s ability to exist causally connected at different spatial locations in the body and through differing phases of time. There is a sense that there is a need for re-creation as a result of sin.19 Scriptures speak of humans after the Fall as lost, dead, and rebellious toward God. Arguably, privation is the core of the Scriptural teaching on evil and is a plausible way to understand rebellion and corruption.

Human change as both restoration and transformation It seems apparent from Scripture that there is a two-fold process in redemption. First, there is the process of setting us aright and making us whole beings. Christ is in effect restoring humanity. Second, we experience a process of change wherein Christ is taking us beyond the Edenic state. We experience a kind of stepping up or transformative process, ontologically speaking, wherein Christ elevates the state of the individual human person. The biblical category of salvation and sanctification serves to prepare us for transformation. So, while there is an enduring ‘I’ that is conscious, free, and rational, there is a sense of transformation and transcendence at this stage of development.20 Theologically, this is a movement from knowledge to wisdom (see Romans 12), from morality to holiness (Romans 1–5), and from goodness to glory (see John 17). Other corresponding analogues are present to illustrate a human being’s transcendence and ability to change in significant ways. Aquinas’ distinction between natural and supernatural is coherent with this discussion. With respect to natural revelation, there are truths known about God from the created order, but this knowledge is incomplete. Supernatural/special revelation completes natural knowledge. The Scriptures do not merely speak of bringing humans back to a state of goodness as in Eden. While redemption includes this aspect, it also includes more dimensions.21 The final category in the narrative of Scripture includes glorification.22 The category of glorification is predicable on the metaphysical ground accounting

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for human transformation, namely, a human soul as substance. Above I advanced the idea that the soul has an overlap in his being with the Divine nature by bearing a property that is both intrinsic and mind-independent, which provides the ground for transformation.23 The state of glorification is linked to Christology. It may be notable that my Christological presuppositions include a high Christology, where in the historical person Jesus is a Divine person with a human nature who is the saviour of mankind as he transfers the human from her earthly state to her state of glory. It is in virtue of the human union with Jesus Christ that the human is saved and glorified. John 1 describes Christ as the Logos and the Light who brings knowledge of God to humans. Colossians 1:15, says: ‘He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.’ Colossians 1:14, states: ‘in whom we have redemption.’ Therefore, it is in virtue of this union that we are redeemed and glorified. What is the nature of this union? It could be interpreted as a mystical union, a legal union, and a contractual relationship or as a substantial relationship (construed along the lines of a compound structure). The Scriptures seem to have something deeper in mind than a mere contract or legal union. In 2 Peter 1:3–4 there is a kind of participation in God: His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature…. In virtue of the human union with Christ, the human participates in God. The heart of this participation is something that penetrates to the level of substance. In contrast to some views, where persons can mystically converge in the Divine, there is still an enduring ‘I’ or soul presupposed in Scripture.24 It may be best to posit a substantial relation (i.e. compound structure) that unites the individual to Christ thereby allowing participation in Christ.25 I take this topic up in Chapter 7, where I advance one way for conceiving of souls in union with Christ, and show that Cartesian souls are not only stable but also dynamic in nature. My point in all of this is that substance ontology, specifically an immaterial substance, is able to capture the data in Scripture regarding humanity’s stable and dynamic capacities, and this is reflective of the Catholic tradition.26 I do not believe a material substance can capture the data because I do not believe material things have first-person consciousness, free will, intrinsic causal power, and related ontological powers – as defended in Chapter 1; thus the reason I contend for a soul as substance. More importantly, material entities lack the ability to persist through significant change and the ability to transcend that which is natural. What is it that happens to humans substantively? The answer is glory in virtue of our relationship with Christ, which is a new state and mode of existence. The motivation toward relational ontology and relational theories

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of the imago Dei in the contemporary literature has refreshed the imago Dei/ personhood discussion. Relations certainly do have a place in Scripture and understanding the self but the heart of the matter is substantial rather than relational. Relations require and philosophically presuppose substances – albeit substances that have a telos toward Christological union.27 As we have seen according to the biblical narrative and the plan of redemption, there are necessary preconditions pertaining to stable aspects of man and dynamic aspects that are actualized in glory through our union with Christ. Romans 8:29–30 summarizes what precedes and presupposes the soul as substance: For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified [emphasis mine].28 The substantive view of the imago Dei is ‘holistic’ and encompasses all of Scripture’s description of man. Humans fundamentally bear an immaterial nature that persists through change. The relational and functional views of the imago Dei presuppose the substantive view. Therefore, substance is fundamental to matters of personal identity and the imago Dei. If we are to explain the data of Scripture metaphysically, then we need a holistic view and an immaterial substance. The substance view (specifically, an immaterial substance) provides a satisfying and persuasive accounting of the data, and it situates the explorative discussions I take up in the remainder of this project. Next, I consider the variety of views within what I have characterized as the Cartesian tradition. Painting a picture of Cartesianism as one stereotypical view for the purposes of shooting holes in it, while common in contemporary theology, is an inadequate portrayal of this rich tradition. I take up a variety of Cartesian variants for the purpose of advancing an initial exploration of Cartesianism in the remaining parts of A Cartesian Exploration.29

Cartesian/person-body substance dualism variants As seen in the Planet of the Apes films, there is an incredible draw toward seeing humans as closely related to the rest of the physical world. From the rise of evolutionary theory, the continuity of species and the similarities between humans and animals there has been a paradigm shift in our philosophical and theological constructions of human persons. To a large extent, this stems from Hume’s thought in Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.30 The response in philosophical and theological circles has been a move toward materialist understandings of the nature of persons and the uniqueness of persons has become a matter of mere relation. I believe this has been an unhelpful move, and materialist views are ultimately unsatisfying. Yet even in light of this move, there is still a strong sense that human persons are different. There are a variety

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of ways to parse out the mind-body relationship on Cartesianism, and each variant has implications for one’s understanding of anthropology. To this we turn.

Pure, compound, or composite substance dualism: disambiguating terminology Let us distinguish two or three broad views on substance dualism. The first is strict or ‘pure’ dualism (PSD), the second is compound dualism, and the third might be distinguished from compound variants as composite dualism.31 Later, I suggest that there is an important distinction between compound variants and composite variants. Pure dualism says that I am strictly identified with my soul/ mind yet contingently attached to the body.32 There may be some ambiguity in communicating that the soul has existence apart from the body because it tends to convey the soul as a part of the person, but on PSD the soul just is an individual person.33 This has been called person-body substance dualism (PBSD) in the Plato‑Augustine‑Descartes tradition, yet I will suggest that there are variations within PBSD that fall under pure varieties of substance dualism (which might be construed as compound structures or substances in terms of human nature) in contrast to composite variations.34 The second is compound or composite dualism. While these two terms often refer to one position in the philosophy of mind literature, I suggest that there are some sufficient distinctions between the two. On a compound view, as I describe it, human beings have two parts but the essential part of the person is a pure mental ego that has a part in terms of a property-nature (I call this CSD). Composite dualism is the notion that I am composed of both body and soul and both are essential or necessary in some sense (hereafter, COSD). In discussing the nature of these substances, I am interested in the question of what kind of thing is an ens per se (i.e. existence that is not dependent as a property) rather than ens per accidens (i.e. accidental existence).35 I am also interested in the implications this has for personal identity. Defenders of Cartesian variants of PSD, CSD, and COSD agree that there are two kinds of things in a human person, generally speaking. Added to this, if one assumes the Christian tradition, normally the soul substance has ens per se existence in some sense, yet the distinction is in a weak or strong sense.36 On a broadly Cartesian view, the soul substance has an ens per se kind of existence in a strong sense, meaning that the soul exists not as a proper part or accident of the person but as person proper, thus also existing independently from the body. Proponents of most varieties of COSD maintain that the soul substance is not a proper substance. Rather, it is incomplete in its nature when apart from the bodily organism. The composite dualist contends that the soul substance is properly unified with the body as a human person and the soul substance may have an ens per se kind of existence in a weak sense, yet more naturally is an ens per accidens as it is united substantially with the material organism.37 The categorization distinguishing pure and compound/composite varieties of substance dualism is common in philosophical literature, as I show below, in

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addition to the theological literature. In a recent theological work, Nancey Murphy suggests that in addition to two kinds of materialism there are two kinds of substance dualism. She distinguishes between radical dualism and holistic dualism. Radical dualism she defines as the soul being separable from the body and persons being identified with their souls – similar to how I define PSD. She defines holistic dualism as the view that persons are composites of separable parts where persons identify with the whole.38 However, I argue in this chapter and the next chapter that a great deal more variety is on offer for theological reflection. One of the hallmarks of PBSD that Murphy associates with radical dualism is the notion that persons are separable from their bodies, but I delineate two Cartesian variations that are much more holistic concerning the soul-body relationship (e.g. CSD, and at least one variant of COSD). Furthermore, I take it that some variations of holistic dualism where persons are strictly identical to both body and soul are ambiguous.

Compound/composite dualists and confusion It seems many substance dualists today (whether laymen or academics) are confused, accept a confused notion of personhood, or use ambiguous language in reference to the body and soul of humans.39 Consider the substance dualist Richard Swinburne, as an example. An example of such confusion is evident in Richard Swinburne’s fine work, The Evolution of the Soul.40 Swinburne states, That truths about persons are other than truths about their bodies and parts thereof – is, I suggest, forced upon anyone who reflects seriously on the fact of the unity of consciousness over time and at a time. A framework of thought, which makes sense of this fact, is provided if we think of a person as body plus soul, such that the continuing of the soul alone guarantees the continuing of a person.41 It is not clear from this statement, and others like it, whether Swinburne takes the person to be strictly identified with his soul or the soul and body. He states that a person is a body plus soul, but then proceeds to say that the person persists in virtue of the soul. It is also unclear whether he is saying that I am strictly identified with the soul or I continue to exist as a thing that supervenes on my soul-part. Alternatively, he might say that my soul preserves the core of me when separate from the body. If we are to be charitable to Swinburne, we could tell a story that is consistent with what Swinburne states. We could say something along the lines that the soul simpliciter can expand to include the body (accidentally) for certain phases of time.42 During which, I am still a soul, but can assume a body whereby the parts become a functional unity. While this seems consistent with Swinburne’s view, this is not what Swinburne says. Thus, I suggest that one can arrive at further clarity on the variations of substance dualism. Let us turn to

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consider a variation of a pure mental subject (which Swinburne affirms) that could be construed as a variation of compound substance dualism.

Swinburne and modified compound/composite substance dualism I do not think that Swinburne is confused about his view, but I do think the language mentioned above in The Evolution of the Soul is ambiguous. I believe it is further reflective of a general understanding of substance dualism and is part of the reason why I contend for further clarity. Swinburne in ‘From Mental/Physical Identity to Substance Dualism,’ is clearer on his position of the mind and body.43 He develops a view very similar to mine, which I develop below that persons are simple and pure mental substances that do not supervene on the body, yet bear some robust relation to the body and can exist apart from the body.44 He explicitly states this: ‘My final claim is that human beings, you and I, are pure mental substances (which do not supervene on physical substances).’45 Yet later on, somewhat confusingly, Swinburne refers to the human person as a pure mental substance that is a ‘composite of substances of two genera.’46 What needs to be distinguished is the nature of the two concrete parts and their relations to the other. I affirm that the person is literally a soul – individualized. Whereas Swinburne would say that I think in virtue of my soul, I would say I am a soul and I am thinking.47 Interestingly, Swinburne also affirms that the body is a contingent part of me.48 What this seems to mean for Swinburne is not that I am literally identical to both body and soul, but that I bear some property and relation to my body that fills out my nature as a human being. Holding on to the term ‘compound’ or ‘composite’ seems to me to be either metaphysically confused or lend itself to ambiguity for the reader. It seems there are two reasons for Swinburne’s use of the term ‘composite.’ First, Swinburne affirms a view that holds intuitions from both a traditional Platonic conception of persons and an Aristotelian and/or hylomorphic conception of human beings. The person is identified with his soul, yet persons require causal interaction with the brain for maintaining consciousness.49 Swinburne, then, assumes a more finely grained role for mind on brain dependence.50 Yet, he holds this in tension with his view that persons are souls or supervene on souls and have the potential for disembodied survival. The difficulty with this position is one that Swinburne has stated himself, and that is that there is no clearly developed theory on the mind and brain relationship.51 In this respect, Swinburne may be affirming an unnecessary empirical constraint on his theory of persons that, otherwise, would not lend it to using confused language. Furthermore, it seems accurate to describe his position as a species of PSD not too dissimilar from other positions affirming a pure simple immaterial self. Second, Swinburne states that telling the story of souls and bodies is different from telling stories of human beings because of the development of human beings in virtue of both body and soul.52 This seems backwards. If a person is a pure mental substance, then he could tell a story by beginning with the person as soul that has a body such that there is a unity-relation between the body and

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soul. The body is a contingent part of human nature, thus one can literally speak of the human person’s body and the history that follows from having that body, but this to me does not seem to necessitate affirming COSD. It seems better to say that ‘I’ as a soul has a body contingently, yet naturally. This is not to say that the soul/person is at once a mental substance and body, later to be only a mental substance if the soul persists after detachment from the body.53 Another reason for affirming the term ‘composite’ might be that the soul cannot think without the body, and as such this might point to the fact that persons are composed of two parts. If this were the case, then it would seem that the body might be a necessary and essential part of the human person. It does not seem that Swinburne is affirming this, however, given his insistence that human persons are pure mental substances.54 While Swinburne is not entirely clear on these matters, there is a way to affirm a view in line with Swinburne without the confusion. In reference to human beings, one could affirm that pure souls are the core of persons, which take on bodies as the completion of human nature (construed in terms of a kind-property wherein objects fall under specified categories when they bear a specific property(s)). An additional worry may be that we cannot predicate certain properties of the soul/person that are properties only exemplified in material things, for example weight. My body may weigh 160 pounds, but some may contend this is not literally true of persons. The body that the soul of John interacts with weighs 170 pounds, but John does not literally weigh that much. It seems that one can say that the soul exemplifies an accidental property that is derived from the body. To disambiguate the language, we could say that John’s body weighs 170 lbs.55 To avoid confusion between the body and soul on certain variations of compound/composite dualism, one needs to clarify finer distinctions between the person in relation to the body and the soul along the lines of nature as a kind-property. Having said this, I believe we can affirm a view in line with Swinburne that affirms a compound nature. It seems that this means that the term compound is a reference, not to the soul or the person, but to the property-nature such that the soul does not literally expand to include the body nor is the person literally composed of two composite parts. This one might call compound substance dualism (CSD), which still affirms a pure mental subject.

Why should one expect that pure minds/souls would normally be united to a body without a necessary and essential connection? On PSD (and other pure varieties of dualism) the soul is naturally and normally attached to a body without a necessary relationship between the soul and body. I have four reasons for thinking that persons are naturally and normally attached to bodies. The first is an empirical or experiential reason and the latter three are theological reasons. First, from an empirical and experiential standpoint we have every reason to think that we are naturally and normally attached (does not connote location, but it means metaphysical ownership and

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that there exists a causal relationship) to bodies. From the beginning of our existence we are embodied, at least, so far as we are aware. In terms of our experiences we are physically embodied beings who live in the natural physical universe for the purpose of growing and acting in the universe. The body offers the person many virtues that otherwise might not be accessible to the person: physical powers to move, and epistemological powers through the physical senses etc. However, a defender of Berkleyan idealism would construe the relationship of the soul to the body in a different manner. Physical bodies are not substances in their own right but are mind-dependent. While this is true, I assume throughout A Cartesian Exploration a common sense view of souls and bodies that bodies are external to the soul and the datum of bodies being external does not immediately cohere with idealism, at least not obviously. Second, we have a theological reason to think that we are in fact naturally and normally embodied because of the Creation narrative in Genesis. This too fits with the first reason that from an empirical and experiential standpoint we are normally embodied. In the Creation narrative when God breathes into the body, man begins to exist. There is no implicit teaching in the Creation narrative that Adam pre-existed his embodiment (pace Origen). Third, we have a theological reason from Christology to think that human persons are normally and naturally embodied because Christ became incarnate not simply as a soul but as a body plus soul in functional unity. Fourth, if from the perspective of Christian tradition and the Scriptural teaching one affirms the physical resurrection, then we have another theological reason for thinking that human souls are normally and naturally embodied beings. The reasons given here do not establish an ontological necessity of embodiment, but we have practical and more than one theological reason for thinking this is the case.56 However, one may seek to ground the unity of soul and body in a metaphysical relation or property. Providing a metaphysical reason that grounds the above-mentioned theological reasons would move PSD toward CSD (i.e. compound substance dualism) or COSD (i.e. composite substance dualism). If one were to affirm that the soul comes into existence with a body (i.e. the essentiality of origins), then we may have reason to affirm a kind soul (namely, that souls are created kinds that fall under certain categories in virtue of a property(s)) that has some unity with a body. The soul does come into the world with an essential origin relation to a body. Therefore, souls have a union relation to a body. We shall return to this matter in the second section of this book. I would like to make one modification to PSD. If one holds that the human soul in PSD generally requires and depends on a physical body for complete functionality, then there is at least a distinction from other more radical varieties of PSD that are Platonic in nature. It seems that a proponent of PSD could affirm that, generally speaking, the human soul depends on a sufficiently complex neural structure for complete functionality because the body/brain supplies additional powers to the soul and it may causally bring about other powers that are naturally predicable of souls. Furthermore, if one construes the human soul as somehow weakly supervenient on the body during embodiment and needing the

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body for the soul’s flourishing, then this requires a distinction from other varieties of PSD. What I have laid out here lends itself to a version of compound substance dualism that is a species of PSD (construed in terms of units or compound structures). To parse out the distinctions more fully and to answer the question of why a soul is attached to a body, I suggest the following. First, one must distinguish between different types of souls. Second, distinctions can be made in terms of the soul-body relation and their relation to human nature. As to the first, I suggest that there are relational souls, kind-souls, and something in between these two.57 A relational soul might be construed as a generic soul in its own right that can change, adapt, and mould to a particular body. In this way, souls do not have an intrinsic relation to bodies, but are able to become embodied. In this way, relational souls, you might say, are not essentially human. Instead, they bear a relation to a human body when embodied. For example, on this view it is possible that a soul could adapt to a human body or a frog’s body. Consider the Grimm’s fairy tale of the Frog Prince. The same prince is cursed to become a frog until a princess finds and kisses the frog.58 Kind-souls are distinct in that souls have a kind relation to bodies. Bodies and souls are fitted for the other, so that there are particular kinds of souls that are fitted to particular kinds of physical entities, for example a human kind-soul and a human body. If there were other souls, they too would be kinds that are properly united to their bodies. For example, if frogs have souls, then they would have frog souls not just any ‘old soul.’ It would appear that kind souls could only exist embodied in a kind relationship to a particular kind of body. It may be that the soul exists in a necessary and or essential relationship to the particular body. Similar in some ways to both a relational view and a kind view, a hybrid view would say that human souls could exist on their own as a substance like relational souls, but have intrinsic aptness for a human body. Souls, then, bear a kind relationship to bodies (of a particular kind). One could think of this union relationship as a first-order property or dispositional property that is only actualized (i.e. second-order properties) when embodied. Second, these views of souls correspond to variations of substance dualism. As stated above, PSD could be construed as a relational soul, which does not bear an intrinsic relation to bodies, but can take on a body (and the body may contribute in some functional sense). One could modify this, something like Swinburne’s view, and affirm the hybrid soul. This would mean that souls are kinds (construed along the lines of the hybrid view I mention above), yet bear the property humanness essentially or bear a dispositional property – even if disembodied. Connected to this, a human soul has a natural aptness to embodiment in terms of the nature it bears. A human being really is a compound unit or substance when embodied (i.e. a compound is construed in terms of nature), thus the union relation of body and soul would be something like a property and nature union. Call this compound substance dualism or CSD. This would mean that souls and bodies maintain their respective distinctions and powers

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(as with PSD), but that they could unite as compound structures, comprising other discrete parts. Something like the parts of a house that remain distinct but are united to one another thus forming a house. This leads to the final variant of Cartesianism. Finally, composite variations are normally identified with compound variations, yet they might be construed along the lines of kind-souls with an intrinsic and necessary relation to bodies. Some variations construe the soul as carrying matter along all the time, even if it lacks the structural completion of a body. Having said this, PSD, CSD, and some versions of COSD fall under PBSD (i.e. Cartesianism broadly construed) whereby there is a modal distinction of person and body. I will discuss these topics in greater detail in the next chapter when I link philosophical anthropology to the soul’s origin.

Notes 1 These narratival movements are taken up in more detail in the remaining parts of the book. 2 The first portion of this chapter is a slightly modified version of an article I have published elsewhere. See Farris, Joshua R., ‘An Immaterial Substance view: Imago Dei in Creation and Redemption,’ The Heythrop Journal of Philosophy and Theology (2015), published online, DOI: 10.1111/heyj.12274. 3 Walls, Jerry L., Heaven: The Logic of Eternal Joy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 92–102. He draws from Colin Gunton in The One, the Three, and the Many (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Relational ontology and language is common parlance in more dynamic views of God, namely Process Theology and Open Theism. It seems to be prevalent and growing in evangelical theological circles as well. A recent treatment is found in Vanhoozer, Remythologizing Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), see especially chaps 3, 4, and 6. 4 Ibid, 108. 5 Ibid, 109. 6 See Mouw, Richard, ‘The Imago Dei and Philosophical Anthropology,’ in Christian Scholar’s Review XLI:3 (Spring 2012), 264. 7 Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.16.2, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, revised by A. Cleveland (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson, 1994), 1.5444. The Patristics in general held to these distinctions. Grenz says this: ‘The position Irenaeus articulated is representative of the anthropology of the patristic era,’ The Social God and the Relational Self (2001), p. 149. This is taught in Aquinas, at least conceptually. Aquinas taught that the image is seen in three ways: at creation in all, at salvation and at glory. See Summa Theologica, trans. by Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 5 vols (Westminster, Maryland: Christian Classics, 1948), p. 477 (1.93.4 and 9, 1:471–472). This is taught in Origin, Irenaeus, Gregory of Nyssa. For an exposition of some of the historical views on this see the discussion in Nonna Verna Harrison, God’s Many-Splendored Image: Theological Anthropology for Christian Formation (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2010), chap. 2. Historically, the universal Church seems to be in favour of this understanding that humans were created with the idea that they could grow toward maturity even if it is not couched in the terms image and likeness alone. 8 A recent advocate of this view is Nonna Verna Harrison, God’s Many-Splendored Image: Theological Anthropology for Christian Formation, Introduction. Harrison is influenced by Eastern Orthodoxy and Platonic notions that are pervasive in Eastern Orthodoxy, for instance in Origen. Throughout history many in the Catholic

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tradition held to this distinction as well, including: Thomas Aquinas, John of Damascene, and others. Luther held likeness as a part of the image. See Aquinas’s Summa Theologica: Vol. 1 Pt. 1 Q. 93, ninth Article ‘Whether ‘Likeness’ Is Properly Distinguished from Image’, trans. by Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Notre Dame: Christian Classics, 1948), p. 477. John Calvin, Institutes: Book 1 trans. by John T. McNeil (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1948), pp. 187–189 (chapter XV.3). James Leo Garrett, Systematic Theology: Biblical, Historical, and Evangelical, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), 1:393; Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology, 3 vols. in 1 vol. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1987), pp. 500–501. I do think this is conceptually in line with Ecclesiastical history even if I am not couching the philosophical distinction in the terms image and likeness. I also believe that historically hylomorphism was predominantly presupposed by many divines and by the framers of many of the creeds (i.e. Chalcedon) throughout history. Even though this may be true, I believe Cartesianism does all the work necessary for articulating doctrine and is compatible with the Church’s teachings. Furthermore, I am convinced on philosophical grounds that Cartesianism is true and that it coheres with the teachings of Scripture. Westminster Assembly, The Westminster shorter catechism (Richmond: Presbyterian Committee of Publication, 1861), question 1 and answer 1. The New International Version actually says: ‘we may also share in his glory.’ The original says: ειπερ συμπασξομεν ινα και συνδοζαστηωμεν. This literally means something upon suffering with him in order that we might (subjunctive) share his glory. The Latin vulgate uses the word ‘conglorificemur.’ There is a glory that is participated in by the new humanity. This is quite fascinating and demonstrates the point that humanity’s end is something beyond the natural created order. This line of logic has been used to develop more of an eschatological view of human persons and the imago Dei where the focus, it is argued, is on the eschatological end/ purpose of man as he is defined in Christ. What I am suggesting here takes on a different character from a Christocentric and narrative view of the imago Dei. An eschatological view is insufficient though, by itself, because it misses the important emphasis in Scripture whereby man is the image of God from the beginning. Joshua Hoffman and Gary Rosenkrantz, Substance: Its Nature and Existence (New York: Routledge Publishing, 1997), p. 63. Ibid. 69. Ibid. 68–69. I do not mean re-creation in a strict literal sense. This does not mean as some have suggested that Christ is literally the image and we are not, but that Christ is the Archetype of man, the exemplar, the perfection and the logical completion of humanity’s end/purpose. Some have argued for a relational ontology with respect to man’s identity and the image that is tied to Jesus who is literally the image. This is intriguing but I believe it is difficult to make this case exegetically in Scripture. It seems that individual human persons have the image as a part of their essential natures not that they are simply related to the image-Christ. Thus, the Scriptures can literally say and mean that man is the image of God and is the glory of God’s creation and redemption. See Kathryn Tanner for an intriguing defence of the view that Christ is the image and we are related to that image in our union with Christ. She develops this view in Christ the Key (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), chap. 1. Tanner’s view is intriguing and I believe she makes the best case theologically and from Scripture for this view, but I think that it is missing the substantive nature of the image in man at creation that is represented and referred to in various places throughout Scripture. The image of God is something essential to the existence of human beings, thus philosophically it does not make sense for persons to have lost the image.

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Cartesian souls and theological prolegomena Metaphorically one could speak of this image as lost as it corresponds to man’s lack or malfunctioning. If the image of God is essential to human existence, then to the extent that an individual human has being he can be said to be in the image of God. Furthermore, the Scriptures never speak of man having lost his image. In fact Scripture still speaks of man in his fallen state as being in the image of God (see James 3:9). This might fit with Irenaean soul-making theodicy. Human beings were created with the intent that a greater good would transpire through the Fall. The process of soulmaking is a process of making persons better and preparing them to see God. See John Hick, ‘An Irenaean Theodicy,’ in Encountering Evil, ed. by Steven T. Davis (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1981), p. 39. The answer to this question as to whether God would create man with the intent of bringing good through the Fall is a question that comes down to God’s decrees. This would require a supralapsarian view within God’s decrees, wherein he decreed the Fall in order that humans might ultimately be ‘glorified.’ It is possible on another understanding of God’s decrees. God could have not intended the Fall but decreed salvation as a result of the Fall. God still may have had a plan of bringing Christ for the purpose of bringing man to a more perfected state. Ralph McInerny discusses this in his Ethica Thomistica: The Moral Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, revised edition (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1997), chap. 8. McInerny discusses Aquinas’ distinction between natural and special revelation as they pertain to Thomas’ understanding of moral philosophy. He also speaks of this as a matter of cognition and existential reality. Aquinas taught that the image is seen in three ways: at creation in all, at salvation, and at glory. Summa Theologica, translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province, 5 vols (Westminster, Maryland: Christian Classics, 1948), 1.93.4 and 9, 1:471–472, 477. Aquinas here has a focus on the substantial human person. The manner in which the Scriptures and Christian tradition speak of human personhood and the image of God is a substantive matter. Here I am drawing from what may be considered an ‘eschatological’ view of the image of God. The eschatological view is closely aligned with relational views and many times seems to assume a relational ontology. Here I am not assuming this view because I believe substance captures something prior to the eschatological self as seen in the creational self. For an example of an eschatological view, see Stanley Grenz’s useful book, The Social God and the Relational Self. If it were intrinsic but mind-dependent, this could be articulated along the lines of a Neo-Platonic ontology. Presupposing biblical tradition, as I do, there is a clear Creator and creature distinction. However, one could explain the unity of God and man as something like a compound structure where the parts (namely human persons) become parts of Christ’s body by fusing and/or melding as one compound unity. This also fits with our common sense intuitions and with the Protestant Reformed tradition with which I align. I posit a Compositional Christology whereby enduring souls become parts of Christ’s human nature, thus filling out a larger composite whole/substance. I argue this philosophically and theologically. For a philosophical case in favour of substance/subject as foundational to event ontology/causality see E.J. Lowe, A Survey of Metaphysics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), chap. 13. Here Lowe argues for a reductive account of event causation to substance causation. This is applicable to my understanding of substance and relations. Even if there is an irreducible role for event-relations, it still seems that substance is fundamental to matters relational. Substance is not reducible to an event. Lowe offers a distinct variation of substance dualism in Personal Agency: The Metaphysics of Mind and Action (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Ontologically speaking two substances are required for relations to exist, generally. One could speak of having a relation to oneself. Relations supervene on substances in interaction.

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28 Romans 8 also speak of this life not comparing or paralleling the life to come. This may imply a kind of stepping up, as well, wherein there is not an exact parallel between the creation and new creation. There is an imperfect parallel between the fallen Adam as the head of the human race and Christ as the glorified Adam and the new head of the human race. The new heavens and new earth are better than Eden. 29 A quick perusal of the literature on theological anthropology will show this to be the case. For a sampling of literature see Joel B. Green, Body, Soul, and Human Life (2008); Nancey Murphy, Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies (2006). 30 See David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature. Project Gutenberg, eBook collection. See especially section IX, ‘The Reason of Animals’ (13 February 2013; accessed 21 April 2014). 31 Eric T. Olson uses these two terms in ‘A Compound of Two Substances,’ in Soul, Body and Survival Essays on the Metaphysics of Human Persons (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), p. 73. Olson has argued that if one is going to affirm substance dualism, then s/he should affirm a pure version where there is a mere causal connection between soul and body rather than compound or complex versions of the doctrine. He suggests that he cannot conceive of what else there is or what it is that the dualist might desire. In this portion of the chapter, I suggest that we do in fact have greater variety worthy of our consideration than that which Olson is willing to grant. 32 Many holding this view would say you survive bodily death, and some may not have a place for survival. Although it is ambiguous how a soul survives on certain views given that the body is a part of me and the soul depends on the body in some fashion. 33 Often in the philosophical-theological literature, authors raise the problem of the objective and subjective. The soul substance is a kind of thing objectively speaking, but souls are individualized. The subjective dimension of reality does not contradict objective reality, but instead is a part of a realist objective reality. 34 Joseph Butler and Thomas Reid also held this view. See Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro, A Brief History of the Soul (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), see chap. 4. This is a recent defence of substance dualism in the tradition of Plato‑AugustineDescartes. While a defence of this tradition is not the primary intent of the authors, it is apparent that they hold this view and are defending such a view when reading their discussion of the soul. Also, see a much older article that helpfully compares Augustine with Descartes in terms of their overall project and the relationship of the Self to God. See Marguerite Witmer Kehr, ‘The Doctrine of the Self in St. Augustine and in Descartes,’ The Philosophical Review, vol. 25, no. 4 (1916), 587–615. Also see Paul Helm, John Calvin’s Ideas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), chap. 5. Herein, Helm persuasively defends the notion that Calvin affirms substance dualism closely aligned with both Augustine and Plato. Furthermore, see Paul Helm, Calvin at the Centre (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), chap. 2. Helm defends the idea that Descartes has an Augustinian view of the soul and its relationship to God. Additionally, Helm argues that Cartesian thought as a philosophical project might provide the underpinnings for Protestant theology. 35 The terms ens per se and ens per accidens are Latin terms, which mean essential unity and accidental unity. This plays a large role in how one parses out the relation of mind and body. For Cartesian substance dualism, this becomes very important for understanding whether and how an interactive relation undergirds union or vice versa. 36 A position holding that a thing can exist on its own in a weak sense would say it is comparable with a hand that is detached from the body for a period. We would say that it is a hand that could exist for a short period. If a strong sense, then one would contend that a thing could exist on its own as normal objects would exist and naturally exist on their own. It has the quality of life necessary for living or persisting in existence.

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37 It is debatable whether Descartes held to this, but generally and traditionally, this is attributed to him. He does make statements that can be misleading, as do many substance dualists, but logically much of what he does say about what I am calling the I-concept here logically fits best with pure dualism. For a more compound-esque view see Marleen Rozemond, Descartes’s Dualism (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2002). For a more composite variation, as I construe these below, see Paul Hoffman, Essays on Descartes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), part one. 38 See Nancey Murphy, ‘Human Nature: Historical, Scientific, and Religious Issues’, in Whatever Happened to the Soul: Scientific and Theological Portraits of Human Nature (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), p. 24. 39 See Eric T. Olson, ‘A Compound of Two Substances’, in Soul, Body, and Survival, ed. by Kevin Corcoran (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2002), 73–89. For representative sampling, see the following: Richard Swinburne, The Evolution of the Soul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), see especially chap. 8. Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (London: Hutchinson, 1949), pp. 18 and 189. It is not uncommon to refer to Descartes as a compound dualist, but what this means in terms of union is important and unclear in the literature. If one can make sense of a more fundamental union undergirding causal interaction, then we could say that Descartes holds to a kind of per se union. I have already made a case for substance dualism in general by way of arguing from the knowledge argument, to the access argument, and the unity of consciousness argument. I do think there are other good reasons to contend for substance dualism, from intentionality, introspection, and consciousness. Brian Leftow uses this analogy in reference to Platonic dualism in his paper, ‘The Humanity of God,’ in The Metaphysics of the Incarnation, ed. by Anna Marmadoro and Jonathan Hill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p 28. 40 Richard Swinburne, The Evolution of the Soul revised edition. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 145–146. If one is clear on the distinctions between the positions, then Swinburne makes this clear on p. 145. Granted on p. 146, Swinburne says something that seems in tension with what he has just stated, ‘The crucial point that Descartes and others were presumably trying to make is not that (in the case of men) the living body is not part of the person, but that it is not essentially, only contingently, part of the person. The body is separable from the person and the person can continue even if the body is destroyed.’ This then seems to be in line with a stricter and pure kind of dualism. To usher in ‘compound’ or ‘composite’ just brings with it conceptual confusion without some fine-grained distinctions. 41 Ibid. 160. See also Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (London: Hutchinson Press, 1949), p. 18. 42 Thanks to Oliver Crisp for suggesting this notion of ‘expand.’ 43 See Swinburne, ‘From Mental/Physical Identity to Substance Dualism,’ in Persons: Human and Divine ed. by Peter van Inwagen and Dean Zimmerman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 44 Yet, on his view, consciousness causally requires the brain to activate the mind. I believe this is where the tension resides. 45 Richard Swinburne, ‘From Mental/Physical Identity to Substance Dualism,’ in Persons: Human and Divine, p. 161. 46 Ibid. 162. 47 Ibid. 163 and ft. 24. Swinburne says this: ‘I think in virtue of my soul thinking.’ He says this in response to Eric T. Olson’s objection from too-many-thinkers in ‘A Compound of Two Substances.’ It seems that Swinburne’s saying this does not make things much better. If I think in virtue of my soul thinking, then many questions still arise in virtue of the operations of soul and person. Does the soul think apart from me? Is the soul as a part of me only a faculty of mine that I possess? It would simply be the ‘I’ that is thinking. You might say that there is a

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functional unity between the soul and the person, but if there are two things thinking, then am I not thinking in addition to my soul? If the soul does not think, then what does it do? Ibid. 162. See William Hasker, The Emergent Self. Richard Swinburne, The Evolution of the Soul, p. 174. Swinburne states: ‘The evidence of neurophysiology and psychology suggests most powerfully that the functioning of the soul depends on the operation of the brain.’ Swinburne seems to assume this throughout the chapter, which is part of the reason for confusion in his talk about the body/brain. It is arguable that if this is true, then persons are really composed of bodies because souls necessarily require bodies for functioning. I am not making this stronger claim, but just showing the logic behind Swinburne’s talk of bodies and persons and some of the reasoning for the ambiguity. This is also the reason he has difficulty in accounting for survival of persons, a traditional doctrine of Christianity. Yet given he says that the core of the person is his immaterial soul, he opens up the door to the possibility for survival. Richard Swinburne, The Evolution of the Soul, p. 196. Swinburne states: ‘Lacking a theory of what it is about the brain which keeps a soul functioning, our ignorance about how and when the soul can function is profound.’ Prior to this statement, Swinburne develops the ground for his concluding this. Swinburne, ‘From Mental/Physical Identity to Substance Dualism,’ p. 163. Swinburne also states human persons that are pure mental substances have occasional identity with their bodies. See p. 163 ft. 24. If the person is a pure mental substance that is identical with the soul + body at specific phase sortals and only a soul at other phase sortals, then this would appear to be a variation of hylomorphic dualism. Of course, matters might not be so simple. This would mean that the soul must be literally in the physical body and provide the form of the physical matter, but it seems that in virtue of Swinburne’s commitment to Cartesian interactionism this is not the case. Thus, it is still difficult to ascertain exactly the ontological relationship between the soul and body other than saying it is a contingent matter. If this is the case, then it seems PSD is the better alternative considering the confusion of language and a lack of an ontological connection to distinguish this version of COSD and PSD. This is similar to those who psychologize about persons, thereby construing and defining persons from a psychological basis. Practical concerns are important and we must develop a metaphysical account, which is able to account for these practical concerns. In a sense, we may begin with the practical, functional data within the world as illustrative for developing a metaphysic. Yet his view is in tension with this notion. Charles Taliaferro, ‘The Soul of the Matter,’ in The Soul Hypothesis: Investigations into the Existence of the Soul, ed. by Mark C. Baker and Stewart Goetz (New York: Continuum, 2011), p. 40. Charles Taliaferro responds to a common worry from materialists that the dualist has a conception that the soul is like a little man flying a plane that is located somewhere in the brain. Taliaferro states: ‘In a healthy, fully functioning human being there need be no bifurcation of person and body.’ This is true, but the unity seems to be a contingent, accidental, and functional unity. Taliaferro is not saying that the person is ontologically identical to the soul and body, but that during embodiment the person is acting as an embodied being. This is not necessarily the case on variations of hylomorphism that see the two substances as ens per accidens, which offers an explication on the necessity of the union. Thanks to Jonathan Chan for pointing out the distinction between a relational soul and a kind soul. Jonathan Chan carefully distinguishes ‘relational’ and ‘kind’ views of souls in ‘A Cartesian Approach to the Incarnation,’ in Ashgate Research Companion

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to Theological Anthropology, ed. by Joshua Farris and Charles Taliaferro (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2015). In parsing out distinctions concerning souls, Chan is drawing from Oliver Crisp in Divinity and Humanity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 38–50. 58 Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm, Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales, trans. by Margaret Hunt (San Diego: Canterbury Classics, 2011), story 1.

Part II

Creation and Cartesian souls

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A Cartesian exploration of the soul’s origin, I Substance dualism, origins, and theological anthropology1

We must now speak of the creation of man: not only because among all God’s works here is the noblest and most remarkable example of his justice, wisdom, and goodness; but also because, as we said at the beginning, we cannot have a clear and complete knowledge of God unless it is accompanied by a corresponding knowledge of ourselves. (Calvin’s Institutes, book 1, chap. XV.1)

The theology of the soul’s origin has received its fair share of systematic treatment in the history of Christian thought.2 Interestingly, it has not received a great deal of contemporary attention. Nevertheless, the soul’s origin has far-reaching implications for the contemporary discussions in science, philosophy, and theology, implications that are often overlooked. Traditionally, there have been three broad views on the origin of souls with variants in each; these include preexistence, creationist, and traducianist. Here I am interested in the creationist view and the traducian view. These views have historically elicited the most attention and remain relevant in contemporary discussions on the soul.3 The rise of research into the philosophy of mind has resulted in a need to explore the options on the origin of the soul and its relationship to the various substance dualist options.4 In this chapter, I answer the important question: What views on origins are available and how do they relate to particular varieties of substance dualism in a comprehensive Christian anthropology? I answer by offering a description of the relationship on the body and soul according to the respective views of origins. I show how Cartesianism (broadly speaking), with all its variety, provides some plausible resources for theological issues motivated by the richness of the Christian tradition.

Defining terms Creationism is the view that God creates the individual soul directly and immediately. God is directly the cause in the sense that he utilizes no other cause to bring about the soul. Thus, God is the terminus of the causal chain. By immediate, I mean that Divine action is without mediation through other causes or events. For the creationist, the creation of the soul is directly rooted

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in a Divine choice-event, not a process that exists prior to the choice-event.5 Traducianism is the view that God creates at least one, if not two, soul immediately and each successive soul, secondarily or mediately, through the generative process from one generation to another. One’s metaphysical assumptions about the relationship between body and souls will lend itself to interesting implications concerning the theology of the soul’s origin.6 Let us turn now to consider these assumptions in more detail.7 The mind-body problem, substance dualism, and implications for origins The mind-body problem has a long history of variegated discussion on the nature of the mind and its relation to the body.8 In other words, what follows is not a piece of historical philosophy, but an exercise in the metaphysics of the mind in relation to the theology of the soul’s origin. The aims of A Cartesian Exploration and the present chapter mean that I have already assumed that there are two types of concrete particulars – one that is physical and the other that is non-physical.9 As a result, it would not serve our purposes here to delve into the variety of positions falling under the mind-body views known as materialism. The reason for this is that it affirms that broadly speaking mental properties either reduce to physicality or logically supervene on the material body. The problem for the materialist is accounting for the apparent distinctness in mental and physical properties and supplying a bridge to move from properties of a material kind to properties of a mental kind. The problem for a substance dualist is different. Substance dualists assume at the outset that there are distinct kinds of property-bearers. Minimally, there are mental or immaterial property-bearers as distinct from material property-bearers. How might one characterize these property-bearers? Let us begin with mental property-bearers. Mental property-bearers have certain characteristics that distinguish them from material property-bearers. Mental property-bearers are characterized by subjective qualia, privacy, internal access, and first-person awareness. Material property-bearers are radically different. Property-bearers of a material kind are characterized by public access or public knowledge, thirdperson knowledge, and characteristics predicated from the physical sciences. Material things or properties are accessible by anyone and everyone. They are thus distinguishable from property-bearers of a mental sort.10 The problem faced by the substance dualist is that both property-bearers are radically different. The two are not different in the same sense that two colours are different or in the sense that flowers are distinguishable by differing characteristics, but propertybearers of a mental kind and property-bearers of a material kind are fundamentally different. The two do not overlap. For the mental and the physical there is not merely a lack of physical and spatial overlap, but a seeming lack of fundamental ontological overlap. Now, establishing the dis-similarity between the two sorts of property-bearers is only one part of the problem. The other part of the problem is one of influence. That is the two seem to interact causally. For instance, when I bump my

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knee on the chair I not only have observable sensations and effects on my physical body, but my mind thinks new thoughts of ‘ouch,’ or at least this is an internal sensation that is distinct from the observable aspects in terms of my body. What is more, when I have thoughts or intentional states of mind it seems to affect or causally influence my body. So, when I have the intentional state of desiring to have a cup of coffee and intend to make a cup, then my body moves when I bring it about as a choice-event. The fundamental cause seems to be my mental state of intending to enjoy a cup of coffee not the physical sensation that then causes the mental state following with other physical causes.11 When I intend to make a cup of coffee and do so, my body acts. Other physical sensations follow from this act. Thus, the two seemingly distinct kinds of things interact in a deep and intimate manner. David Robb and John Heil state the problem in terms of causation quite well, when they say: The philosophical significance of mental causation goes beyond general concerns about the nature of mind. Some philosophers (e.g., Davidson 1963; Mele 1992) insist that the very notion of psychological explanation turns on the intelligibility of mental causation. If your mind and its states, such as your beliefs and desires, were causally isolated from your bodily behavior, then what goes on in your mind could not explain what you do. (For contrary views, see Ginet 1990; Sehon 2005).12 The ensuing dilemma for the substance dualist is that the two property-bearers never seem to meet, so how could the two interact in any causal sense? The problem seems to require some sort of bridge between the two kinds of things to allow some sort of interaction. If a bridge is not supplied, then there is not a solution to the mind-body problem for the substance dualist. Most substance dualists agree that this objection is grossly overstated, for the materialist must provide a bridge between the mind and brain, in addition to providing a reason for thinking that material and immaterial kinds of property are actually part of one ontological kind of thing or stuff. According to Hasker: ‘This argument may hold the all-time record for overrated objections to major philosophical positions. What is true about it is that we lack any intuitive understanding of the causal relationship between Cartesian souls and bodies.’13 The motivation behind this common objection is from a Humean view of causation, roughly, that there is a continuous regularity of succession between objects, but this theory cannot satisfy itself in terms of causation because it lacks the metaphysical explanation for why there should be continuous regularity. Additionally, Hasker states that this is not a decisive problem for the proponent of substance dualism because the materialist has similar problems.14 Both materialists and dualists articulate metaphysical theories of how minds and bodies interact; yet each requires an explanation. Thus, in this way the problem of interaction is a theoretical issue for both and, more fundamentally, causation is an issue that both must come to terms with. While my concern is not explicitly causation, causation helps to shed light on the deeper problem of two distinct

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things that are united and able to interact. Nonetheless, substance dualists have a response to this problem. Generally speaking, substance dualists agree that minds and bodies interact.15 This means that substance dualists, generally, do not deny causal realism or causal powers respective of both material bodies or of souls. Causal realism is the view that an entity or concrete part has the power to act, and this entity or concrete part that seems to be the direct cause is the cause. This is not the notion that this entity seems to have causal powers, but instead is the appearance of something more fundamental. An example would be the event of raising my arm. So in the case of raising my arm, I am the direct cause, or so it seems, not something else undergirding either my choice or the event of the arm raising. This said, all substance dualists agree that there is some kind of fundamental or intimate relation that ties the two substances together. This provides the ground for interaction. The manner in which this is done is different depending on the variety of substance dualism to which one subscribes.16 I shall begin with pure substance dualism. Pure substance dualism, otherwise called Cartesian substance dualism, is the most radical form of substance dualism in terms of the distinctions between bodies and souls.17 Olson defines this view according to which persons are souls and are intimately connected to bodies, although bodies are not parts of persons.18 The proponent of this view would say that the seeming distinction between the mind and body is real. The two do not mix or intermingle. The two are fundamentally different. I, as a person am a soul or directly supervene on a soul that is contingently attached to a body. I do not have extension in space nor am I spatial in any sense of the term. My body is spatial and has extension. I act and interact with my body for the purpose of interacting with the physical world. Thus, the proponent of this view maintains this fundamental distinction, but this does not undermine the reality that minds and bodies interact. In fact, the objector to substance dualism must pre-maturely assume something about the soul to argue that it cannot interact with the body.19 Some proponents of substance dualism have argued for the relationship between the mind and the body as a brute reality that obtains based on a law or based on a personal explanation.20 Connected to this, substance dualists can respond by stating that for there to be a problem one must assume a specific kind of knowledge of souls and their causal powers in relation to the body. I do not see why there is such a problem. For an objection to go through, one must assume a theory of causation that precludes soul’s interacting causally with bodies or with that which is physical. Apart from Hume’s theory, there is not a reason to suppose that souls cannot interact with bodies. The fact of the soul’s lack of spatiality does not preclude it from interacting with a body. One can assert the reality of soul-body interaction based on our experience that I seem to interact with my body. However, it is not the experience alone that provides a metaphysical explanation for the interaction, yet simply the fact that this interaction occurs. Rather, people attribute the causal power of interacting with bodies based on one’s epistemic situation of experiencing it directly. The metaphysical

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ground is distinct from our knowing and experiencing this interaction. The metaphysical explanation is the seeming problem of two distinct sorts of things causally interacting. A partial explanation can be given to defuse the objection to substance dualist interaction. Namely, that there may be a brute relation between the body and soul or that we do not have the requisite knowledge to understand how it is possible that the soul and body interact: a relation that does not undermine the possibility of this interaction from occurring. The reality of souls and bodies interacting is unrelated to our knowing how the two interact. This causal relationship between body and soul may be rooted directly in Divine arbitration as the only plausible personal explanation for mind-body interaction. Alternatively, it may be that God sets up the physical world in such a fashion that when souls begin, they causally function and interact in terms of a law-like relation with the particular hunk of matter to which the soul is attached. The only difficulty for the pure substance dualist is accounting for an intuitive sense of soul-body interaction. Lacking this intuitive sense does not imply the two do not interact. The defender of compound or composite substance dualism proposes a second option concerning the mind-body relationship that may provide a more plausible intuitive accounting.21 The defender of COSD or CSD takes it that the human as an immaterial thing is more closely related to the body in that the natures of the soul and body have an overlap of certain properties or an overlap of being, like concrete nature with structure, and teleological capacities.22 It is difficult to see how Cartesianism could be composite given the distinctness of substances, but if one has, a broader understanding of substance such that a human being is at core a soul as substance that has a sub-set of properties contingently – namely a body – then this could be broadly taken to be compound or composite in nature.23 A third solution is proposed called emergent substance dualism.24 This is the most recent and radical of all three varieties of substance dualism in the sense that the soul emerges from something it is not.25 On this view, souls are synonymous with minds or selves. The proponent of this view puts forth that where other views seem to fail with respect to the intimacy of the mind on brain dependence and evolutionary theory this view succeeds. The defender of the emergent view also contends that it is more economical than the other substance dualist positions. On this view, the soul emerges from a suitably complex neural structure, thus accounting for a deeper intimacy between the mind and brain than other substance dualisms – thereby offering a more satisfying metaphysical explanation for soul and brain interaction.26 There is a distinction in virtue of the doctrine of emergence of the mind as a concrete part from the brain. This view proposes that the soul/self/mind is a new sui generis substance, thus it is not accurate to categorize it as non-reductive materialism with property dualism.27 On this view, the soul is conceptually and modally distinct.28 It is accurate to say that it has some sort of dependence relation now of its origins and continuance that maintain a point of contact for causal interaction between the two parts.29

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Having established the three main positions that are broadly construed as substance dualism, I argue that each is distinct concerning the metaphysical relationship between the body and soul that entail options within the theology of origins. Substance dualist solutions and the theology of origins I propose that the metaphysical relationship between the body and soul on some of the versions of substance dualism lend themselves to distinct and interesting implications in the discussion over the theology of the origin of the soul. I am not attempting to offer a complete definition or explanation of each view on origins, but simply to show the relationship between the substance dualist options and reasons why each might coherently fit with a particular view of origins. I contend that PSD can be articulated along the lines of traditional-traducianism and traditional-creationism. Pure substance dualism co-joined with traditionaltraducianism requires that the defender give up the assumption that souls are simple and assumes that souls are either parturient or fissile. Pure substance dualism (or, alternatively, CSD as I have construed it) co-joined with traditionalcreationism is the most natural position on origins for PSD to take because of the radical distinctions in natures both on the mind-body problem and on the radical distinction in origins. Composite substance dualism is commensurate with or can coherently fit with traditional-traducianism, traditional-creationism (some construals), and emergent-creationism. It most naturally appears to be a species of traditionaltraducianism or emergent-creationism because of the intimate nature of the body and soul as having an overlap of fundamental properties and the potentiality for mixed properties.30 However, it may well be categorized under traditionalcreationism if one can maintain a strict distinction between property-bearers of a mental sort and a material sort, or maintain that each property-bearer is not a part of the other. Emergent substance dualism as I am construing it, according to William Hasker, is a position all on its own distinct from the others in terms of origins. The relation it posits between the mind and the body seems to imply a view of origins that does not cohere with traditional understandings on the origin of the soul within ecclesiastical history. One could think of this as a variation of Cartesianism – a deviant one – that is far from what Descartes would have envisioned given his distinction concerning the nature of body and soul. Nevertheless, the relationship between the soul and body is the reason that it does not cohere with traditional views on origins, even if it could be viewed as a form of Cartesianism. It is a form of generationism because the soul is generated in evolution by the body/brain, and in this way, it could be argued that it is similar to traducianism – yet not appropriately a form of traducianism. What I have shown in this section is the relationship between the mind-body solutions and their relation to views of origins. Thus, I believe that the

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distinctive mind-body relation is closely intertwined with a position on origins. I consider this in more depth below by laying out a variety of substance dualist views within each view on the soul’s origin.

The origin of the soul and options Traditional-traducianism31 It is not uncommon to identify traditional dualism with creationism, but this does not capture the panoply of options reflecting traditional views of souls.32 There are versions of traducianism that might be considered traditional in nature. One divine in Ecclesiastical history that affirmed traducianism is Tertullian who said that human souls were passed down from parents.33 He also stated that this occurred originally from one created soul – Adam.34 Many others affirmed the basic traducian positions that souls are generated from one created soul in Ecclesiastical history.35 Here are some traditional possibilities that, arguably, have Ecclesiastical support and Scriptural support.36 A traditional-traducian view says that God created one human soul directly and immediately that somehow contains all other un-individualized human souls.37 Souls are thus propagated primarily through a generative process becoming individualized souls. Traditional-traducianism: the notion that a parent or at most two parents generate a soul that ultimately derives from God is creating one soul directly and immediately. All successive souls obtain as individual souls from the first soul that was created. The process of generation is not all at once (i.e. synchronic), but it is across time (i.e. diachronic). As stated above, pure and composite varieties of substance dualism could coherently work with traducianism. In what is to follow, I discuss two variations of traditional-traducianism: fissile variations and parturient variations. The first variation is the notion that the soul is fissile in nature. To say that the soul is fissile is to say that souls or persons fissile or split-off and are fused with other material to form a person and/or soul. One version of a fissile traducianism can be grasped in the mental picture of a lump of clay. The lump of clay represents one soul that can become more than one soul, as when clay is divided. With the lump of clay, one can take a piece of clay from it, and then take a piece of clay from that piece of clay, and repeat the process. Souls work in a similar fashion according to the fissile traducian view. God creates one soul that generates other souls similar to a lump of clay. Souls on this view split-off and become new souls from the previous soul.38 The new soul has the potential, again, to split-off. Souls do not split-off directly from Adam each time a soul begins to exist. Instead the process works a different way, souls split-off from the first soul, Adam, becoming other souls, and then succeeding souls split-off from the newly existing souls. New souls do not obtain directly from Adam

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although they exist as non-instantiated souls in one metaphysical substance, Adam, now of Adam’s creation. New souls come into existence at the moment of conception or some later moment in procreation after conception. A second variation of traducianism is parturient in nature. The idea here is that somehow souls give off parts to generate new souls, not that souls split-off. The soul and persons are generated from a previous generation in a line leading back to one created soul. The gamete-like view holds that the parents generate soulish parts that are carried on through human seed. The notion here is that the parents in virtue of the gametes through the seed carry on souls and DNA. Additionally, souls and persons are compound and complex in nature not simple in nature.39 Within parturient traducianism, the process by which persons come into being could be something along the following lines. The unifying process of the soul and/or person takes place in the process of gestation in the mother’s womb when the proper parts come together in syngamy. The proper parts include the soul-part and the body-part. These parts comprise a substance or two substances that unify as one. Therefore, there is still a clear distinction between the two parts. Immaterial or mental substances are distinct from physical or bodily substances. Parturient variations of traducianism seem to be emergent in nature, as well. One example of an emergent and parturient form of traducianism is a version of hylomorphism (e.g. composite substance dualism).40 Hylomorphism that is also a kind of substance dualism does not entail traducianism. This much is true, but it does not mean hylomorphism cannot be worked out as a form of traducianism. Let me lay out how this is possible. Hylomorphism is a form of constituent ontology where there are various parts that go into personhood and are necessary and sufficient conditions for personhood. The necessary constituents include the biological organism that has latent active capacities and passive liabilities and the soul. According to hylomorphic-traducianism, soulish stuff could be carried along with the gametes that give rise to some new emergent person resulting from the occurrence of syngamy.41 There are two constituent parts, body and soul, that constitute the composite person.42 On a hylomorphic variety of substance dualism the person is a composite of both the body and the soul, such that the two substances are modally distinct from the other, but ontologically comprise a human person as substance. The picture of origins on hylomorphism may be something like the following. One could view the soul and body as spatially present with the other, but two different things. If hylomorphism is construed according to natures as powers, then natures are complex things made up of parts. When various parts come together, those parts become a new nature. A rational soul with a body composes human nature. When these parts unite, a new nature comes to exist. Both the soul and body are able to self-breed or reproduce under certain conditions in a similar fashion. Alternatively, it could be that the gametes carry soul-stuff that comes to inform the new body. It is not that rational souls have always existed dependent on physical organisms, but exist dependent on the successive pattern

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of generation (i.e. diachronically) all the way back to the first created soul. Thus, on this view a distinction is clear between souls and physical matter. The picture of a Cartesian-traducian with modification might also be a form of traducianism and parturient emergentism.43 Cartesianism is usually thought to entail creationism and most Cartesians are also creationists, but the position does not entail creationism. Cartesianism, generally speaking, is distinct in that souls are persons and souls are simple things that are not divisible. On a parturient modification of Cartesianism, souls are still persons but persons carry soulish stuff along with the gametes and give rise to distinct individual souls. It is still Cartesian in the sense that the person is identified with his or her soul.44 Yet, on this modification of Cartesianism, a soul is a complex rather than a simple. This is distinct from the above hylomorphic variety of substance dualism in part because it does not contend that the person is essentially composed of two substances, both body and soul. Essentially, the person as substance is his soul that has a body, whereas on a hylomorphic view the person as substance is a body and soul composite. In view of the preceding discussion, it should be clear that there are some alternative options for what might be construed as traditional-traducianism that are distinct from a contemporary view called emergentism or emergent substance dualism whereby the soul somehow emerges from a physical base. By way of establishing the discussion, I have suggested a few views on souls that are traditional and traducian in nature. Now I turn to consider another position on the soul that is both traditional and creationist with respect to the soul’s origin. Simple or traditional-creationist soul (Special Creation)45 The traditional-creationist view might also be termed the ‘Special Creation’ view (SC). This view finds much support in Ecclesiastical history and, arguably, Scriptural support.46 Cartesian dualism is normally thought to be a form of traditional-creationism, and most Cartesians are creationists.47 It seems that a simple or pure form of Cartesianism entails some sort of creationism, but it may be that some variations of composite substance dualism cohere with a simplecreationism or traditional-creationism. There are other views similar to Cartesianism that are also variations of creationism. I discuss this as a live possibility reflecting a traditional-creationist view of the soul’s origin.48 For my purposes here, I intend to give a picture of how these souls originate. Let me first offer a tentative definition of traditional-creationism (hereafter, SC). SC: As a matter of logical priority not temporal priority, God creates the soul as the primary cause of the concrete part/soul. He, then, attaches the soul to the concrete part-body that is generated by a parent(s) at the moment the body begins to exist.49 Alternatively, it could be that God creates the soul, and at the moment, God creates the soul it is causally interactive with the body. The soul is not generated or emergent from a subvenient base of physical matter and/or non-physical stuff.50

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Peter Lombard, it seems, articulates something along these lines, ‘The Catholic Church teaches that souls are created at their infusion into the body.’51 A contemporary example of this kind of creationism that might fit with much of Ecclesiastical tradition is John Foster. John Foster in pressing in on the metaphysical relationship of the body and soul argues that there exists a brute relation grounded in a Divine personal explanation. Thus, there is a direct and vertical link/relation between the Divine and human on this view of origins. Foster explains it this way, An apparent difficulty for the Cartesian view is that there seems to be no remotely plausible way of accounting, in natural terms, for the existence and functional role of the postulated nonphysical subjects. Biological life begins at conception, when an ovum and a sperm fuse to produce a new unitary organism. However, it is hard to see how this process, or the subsequent development of the organism, could create an additional nonphysical substance and functionally attach it to the organism in the relevant way. The answer, it seems to me, is that we should explain these things by appeal to the creative role of God…. it is God who creates the nonphysical subjects and arranges for their functional attachment to the appropriate organisms; and, at least in the case of human beings, theology can offer some account of God’s purpose for doing this, and of why that purpose is rationally appropriate to his nature… Theism enables the Cartesian to explain the existence and role of the nonphysical subjects; and, because this is the only satisfactory explanation, the argument for the Cartesian view becomes itself a powerful argument for the existence of God.52 It is important to note that in Foster’s novel argument, he begins with the relationship between the body and soul, and then moves to the actual existence of the soul as explanatorily grounded in God. On this view, there is not an obviously natural connection between the two such that the further removed problem of the soul requires an explanation outside of the physical domain and its processes. This explanation is rooted directly in a Divine choice-event one might argue. This furnishes a connection between simple/pure substance dualisms in the mind-body literature with that of origins, and it becomes a distinctive theoretical option. The picture that applies to traditional-creationism is the idea that God creates each individual soul directly and immediately and attaches/infuses that soul to a body. God is not the secondary cause, with the primary cause being a physical evolutionary mechanism. This soul is a concrete particular or a substance made up of essential properties that are internally united as a substance of an immaterial kind.53,54 Hence, it is distinct from traducianism where souls are generated from one created soul.55 Therefore, this view of the origin of souls provides a distinct picture not only of souls, but also of God’s relationship to those souls.56 There are two kinds of souls that it would seem might need some kind of direct creative action on God’s behalf. First, an immaterial bare substrata/

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particular would require the direct creative action of God. Second, an essentialist view of an immaterial substance might require the direct creative action of God. The bare substrata or particular view says that there are concrete particulars that have causal powers and are property-bearers, but these particulars are not composed of the said properties. Instead, the substrata or bare particular underlies all properties predicated of it. Michael Loux defines substrata this way: Substrata are not bare in the sense of having no attributes; they are bare in the sense that in themselves they have no attributes; and what this means, he will claim, is that none of the attributes that a substratum has figures in its identity; it has a “being” independent of all of them.57 While I am referring to the bare particular view, I am not referring to any old bare concrete particular, but, specifically, to a mental/soulish bare concrete particular. What is essential on this view is that there is a substratum or particular that is property-less in abstraction from the concrete world.58 Two substances are distinct in that they have two differing substrates. A substrate to some extent has an existence all on its own distinct from its attributes.59 If mental substrates or bare particulars are coherent and plausible, then it seems that there is a need for a creation of these kinds of things.60 It would be the kind of thing created immediately, not mediated via physical processes. These kinds of things are not built from the ground up, instead they seem to be basic brute realities – yet directly contingent on Divine causation. These are not the kinds of things that emerge and these are not complex entities made up of lower-level substances and properties. They are basic brute realities that require some sort of explanation. God as creator seems a plausible explanation of such entities.61 Another option is a form of essentialism with respect to the soul. This view is a middle path between bare particulars and bundle theories. Essentialism holds that there is a subject who has a set of essential properties that comprise the subject and are internally united in the subject. This is distinct from a bare particular that is not composed of essential properties. On this view, the picture would look something like God bringing all the necessary and essential properties together to form a soul, and at the moment the body reaches some sort of complexity, then God either creates the substance/soul in the body or creates the substance/soul and attaches it to the body.62 Cartesianism might work in terms of the above-mentioned kinds of substance. Cartesianism would look something like God creating the bare substrata or fashioning the soul with essential qualities, and then attaching it to the body. Moreland defines it this way: According to Cartesian creationism, egg and sperm are merely physicalchemical entities and the PR63 conditions are sufficient for the generation of a human’s body, which, you will recall, is merely a physical object. On the Cartesian creationist view, at some point between conception and birth,

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Creation and Cartesian souls God creates a soul and connects it to a body that results entirely from PR conditions.64

This naturally fits with variations of Cartesian-like views of souls that are traditional and creationist in nature. A proponent of simple or traditional creationistssouls holds to such radically different natures between souls and bodies and connected to this radically different origins for bodies in contrast to souls, that there is no obvious, necessary, or sufficient condition tying the two together. It may be established by Divine fiat, but beyond that, there is no clear connection.65 This does not undermine the validity of the position, necessarily, but for those desiring to unite the two concrete parts he/she should look to alternative solutions. This does not undermine the body’s usefulness to the soul if the body enhances the soul’s powers. Furthermore, there may be some robust relation between the body and soul, but whatever it may be is sufficiently vague or inaccessible. This is where simple or traditional-creationism is distinct from the other three positions on soul’s relation to the body and the origins of the soul. I have addressed three positions on the soul’s origin. While I believe there are reasons for rejecting traducian views in favour of creationism, the arguments in favour of creationism are not decisive. Traditional-creationism is a viable option worthy of consideration. Throughout Christian tradition, there is an inclination toward creationism, which is implicit in what I argue for here. First, I will consider a new view in the history of Christian thought on origins, which is largely attributable to William Hasker. This position is called emergent substance dualism and is a form of substance dualism where the soul emerges from the brain that is often referred to in the contemporary philosophical literature. In Chapter 4, I will consider a hybrid of both emergentism and creationism.

William Hasker and Emergent Substance Dualism (ESDMO): materialist generation of souls Hasker is not the only person contending for emergent substance dualism (hereafter ESDMO), but he is the recognized authority on this position.66 To begin let me offer a tentative definition of ESDMO and materialist origins. ESD and Materialist Generation of Souls: the notion that souls are generated primarily by at least one and at most two parents, and only secondarily created by God via an emergent mechanism whereby God so structures and creates the physical matter with conscious stuff that a soul emerges at some suitably complex neural state. A mechanism directly causes the emergence of a new sui generis unified subject that sustains or has mental properties and powers.67 The creation story of persons within emergentism is along the lines of God designing physical matter with the plurality and diversity of different life, such that at some complex level of biological evolution human persons would evolve.

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Emergent substance dualism is a new view in the discussion on the origin of souls. As a unique version of substance dualism with some virtues in its favour, it deserves consideration in the debate over origins in theological anthropology. While it is similar to traducianism, it is not accurate to categorize it as such. It is traducian-like in that a soul is generated in a physical-like process. First, on all variants of traducianism throughout church history, discussed above, it seems that the soul-progenitors have some direct involvement or contribution to the successively generated soul. Second, on the variants of traducianism, it appears that God contributes at least one new soul (if not two souls; namely Adam and Eve) that have brought about a new chain of events generated from the first progenitors. Emergent substance dualism is also similar in some respects to non-reductive physicalism in that the mind/person comes about from lower-level physical processes. Emergent substance dualism with material origins is distinct from non-reductive physicalist views in that it actually affirms a new sui generis substance obtaining from a material substance at some level of neural complexity.68 Emergent substance dualism literally holds to a real mind/soul that is prerequisite for new properties/powers or obtaining simultaneous with new properties/powers characteristic of persons. Both non-reductive physicalism and emergent substance dualism are similar in that there are law-like connections that establish the intimate connection between body/brain and the mind or physical stuff with phenomenal and conscious experience.69 However, where does conscious-stuff or qualities of an immaterial thing come? This is essential to understanding ESDMO.70 William Hasker in a recent essay touches on the relationship of the soul to the body and its implications in terms of human souls and their origins. After working through materialism and traditional substance dualism, he offers a possible solution to both the mind-body problem and the problem of the soul’s origin. Hasker states this: Here is an initial proposal: a viable solution needs to consider the mental lives of human beings and animals together, rather than separately. The reason for this can be seen in some of the views we’ve already considered. To those who begin by thinking just about the minds/souls of humans, especially when the topic viewed in a religious context, the very idea of “soul” tends to have some rather lofty, “spiritual” connotations… On the other hand, thinkers more inclined to naturalistic or materialistic views tend to start with animals and reduce the psychic life of human beings to what can be explained in the same terms they apply to animals.71 It seems that these qualities or conscious-making stuff come about from previous organisms in the physical universe through the evolutionary process. Somehow, conscious-making mechanisms reside in physical matter, but this is not the same as saying conscious subjects exist from previously existing stuff in the natural world. Something new comes from natural physical stuff, but the

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new thing is distinct from the previously existing stuff. It is not something that, as of yet, is empirically verifiable but it is a theoretical hypothesis given what we know about the physical universe in conjunction with what we know about persons – that come about later in the evolutionary process. One might think this, then, leads to the organic relationship between kinds in the ‘continuity of species,’ if in fact there is no outside influence of creation ex nihilo after the original creation of the world.72 On this view, it is true that physical stuff is fundamental and physical mechanisms bring about various kinds and species of things. On ESDMO because conscious-making stuff exists in physical matter, there is an ontological link between species connected to the origin of physical life, hence common ancestry. This leads to the next tenant of ESDMO concerning the metaphysical relationship between humans and other animals. The notion of an ontological link between dogs and humans seems to presuppose a connection between species and the idea that consciousness is a scaling or a degreed property. Hasker does not use these terms, but he implicitly makes this link when considering the conscious life of higher-level animals and humans. Some common criticisms from both materialists and dualists is that ESDMO may not be a species of substance dualism and ESDMO amounts to a problematic sort of creation ex nihilo, but these particular issues must be taken up elsewhere.73 Another view that is similar to ESDMO yet is also a distinct version of creationism is called emergent-creationism. I consider this in the next chapter.

Conclusion My attempt in this chapter has been to provide a variety of substance dualist options concerning origins for discussion in terms of broad contemporary concerns related to these options in a Christian anthropology. By drawing from recent work on metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, I have provided a ground for contemporary discussion. I have exposited three options on the soul’s origin, and variety within each of the options. I put forth two traditional options and one relatively new option for consideration. My constructive contribution has been to systematize ESDMO as a materialist generative view of the soul’s origin. Additionally, I have shown that there is a close relationship between mind-body solutions and origins that help elucidate the discussion over the soul’s origin. In the next chapter, I put forward a novel option called emergent-creationism.

Notes 1 The present chapter is a revised and modified version of the following: Joshua R. Farris, ‘Considering Souls of the Past for Today: Soul Origins, Anthropology, and Contemporary Theology,’ in Neue Zeitschrift fur Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie, vol. 57, no. 3 (2015).

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2 There has been a great deal of uncertainty throughout Church history concerning a soul’s origin. See Augustine’s Origin of the Soul, ed. by Robert J. O’Connell (New York: Fordham University Press, 1987). Also, see Thomas Aquinas in Summa Contra Gentiles vol. 2 and Summa Theologica vol. 1. Summa Theologica is translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Notre Dame, IN: Christian Classics, 1948), pp. 459–460 (Pt. 1 Q. 90 Art. 2). In the Protestant tradition, see Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics Vol. II, God and Creation, trans. John Vriend, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), pp. 580. Gerrit Berkouwer, Man: The Image of God, trans. Dirk W. Jellema (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1962), chap. 8. Heinrich Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, trans. G. T. Thomson (London: Collins, 1950), chap. XI. Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology vol. I, trans. by George Mus-grave Giger, ed. James T. Dennison, Jr. (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishers, 2002), pp. 477–482. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology (London, Nelson, vol. 2, 1888), pp. 66–67. For a useful contemporary application of the soul’s origin, see Albert Jones, The Soul of The Embryo (London: T&T Clark, 2003), chap. 7. N.P. Williams has a helpful historical treatment on the origin of souls in his The Ideas of the Fall and of Original Sin (London: Longmans, 1927). For a helpful piece addressing many of the issues on the origin of the soul see A.W. Argyle, ‘The Christian Doctrine of the Origin of the Soul’, Scottish Journal of Theology, vol. 18, no. 3 (1965), 273–293. From more of a philosophical approach with philosophical aims, Hasker has written a great deal that touches on the theology of origins that I find very significant for purposes here. See William Hasker in ‘Souls Beastly and Human’, The Soul Hypothesis: Investigations into the Existence of the Soul, Mark C. Baker and Stewart Goetz, eds, (London: Continuum Books, 2011), chap. 8. Also, see Hasker, The Emergent Self (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999). 3 I am using this in reference to the Origenist view. Origen is the most prominent defender of this view throughout Ecclesiastical history. See Origen in First Principles, 1. 8, 2; 2. 1, if; 2. 9, 1; Against Celsus, 7, 50. See Origen in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church second series (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996). Origen says that souls exist in some heavenly realm prior to embodiment and the creation of the world. So, when speaking of this view I am using it in reference to the more refined sense within Church history (e.g. Origen, early Augustine and others that are heavily platonic in their understanding of the soul). Most would consider the pre-existence view to be unbiblical and unorthodox. I agree with this and see no reason for affirming a pre-existence view of the soul. I have no reason for thinking that I existed in a heavenly state, either philosophical or theological, apart from the difficulty of conceiving my non-existence. 4 These two issues are related and have implications for each other. 5 See Daniel von Wachter, ‘Free Agents as Cause’, in On Human Persons ed. by Klaus Petrus (Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2003), pp. 183–194. von Wachter also calls this an initiating event, which brings about more precision to the libertarian sense of causation than others that root it in some sort of determinism, indeterminism, or no cause. A choice-event is not the notion that the agent intends, which causes my arm to rise. The arm rising is an event that is not caused by anything else, but my choice that just is an event. The two are co-joined and we have a distinct category for this sort of event than what one normally thinks of as an event-cause. Thus, this sort of event is not caused by another event nor is it random, but is the choice of the agent. Somehow, the agent has the instantaneous power of bringing about an immediate event. This notion of a choice-event splits the dilemma of the two-horns between determinism and indeterminism and roots the control of the event directly in the agent. It does so in that an agent with free will has no preceding cause, either deterministic or indeterministic, but the agent begins the causal chain. This is different from the issue of agent-causation where an event could be rooted, metaphysically, in a deterministic process or an indeterministic process (which both are not directly

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Creation and Cartesian souls in the control of the agent). This does not bring precision to the agent him/herself, but gives more precision to the notion of a free-action in terms of events. This also does not mean that the initiating event or choice-event cannot be the cause of other events in a causal chain, it can, but it is distinct from the notion of an event-process whether determined or indetermined. This has been called ‘emergentism’ by some and essentially means the same thing, but emergentism is a more generic term that can refer to the doctrine of emergence whereby sui generis things, properties or laws emerge from a base. Thus, this term can be used in reference to a physicalist view of the mind. I will use this term later as a kind of shorthand for the doctrine of emergence. Generally, I am speaking in terms of the phenomena of emergence and sui generis entities or natures. Specifically, I am speaking in terms of the growing literature in substance dualism like emergent substance dualism and the literature on Thomistic hylomorphic substance dualism. For some of the best introductory treatments on the mind-body problem see E.J. Lowe and David Armstrong. David Armstrong in The Mind-Body Problem: An Opinionated Introduction (Colorado: Westview Press, 1999). E.J. Lowe An Introduction to The Mind-Body Problem (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Robinson, Howard, ‘Dualism’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta, ed., http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2011/entries/dualism/ (Winter 2011; accessed 14 April 2014). This I discussed in Chapters 1 and 2. For a useful article on properties see the following: Swoyer, Chris and Orilia, Francesco, ‘Properties’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta, ed., http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2011/entries/p roperties/ (Winter 2011; accessed 14 April 2014). This is not an uncommon characterization of these distinct properties of material and immaterial things. See Swinburne, The Evolution of the Soul (1997), pp. 6–7. In the philosophical literature mental intendings or doings have also been called ‘tryings.’ See Daniel von Wachter in ‘Free Agents as a Cause’. David Robb and John Heil, ‘Mental Causation’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta, ed. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2009/entries/m ental-causation/ (Summer 2009; accessed on 21 April 2014). See William Hasker in The Emergent Self (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), p. 150. Ibid. 150. Hasker does proceed to raise the question that if we can offer a solution to the mind-body problem that sheds some light on the relational union of the mindbody, then we have reason for accepting it instead. This serves as a part of the movement toward his case in favour of Emergent substance dualism. The only exception to this general rule is mental and physical occasionalism. On this view, it just is that when I have an intention this provides the occasion for the body to behave in a corresponding manner, but it does not mean that my mental act of ‘trying’ is the direct cause of the body behaving in the manner that it does. For example, the occasion of my arm rising in conjunction with my intending to raise my arm is rooted in a Theistic causal explanation of the relationship. See Dean Zimmerman, ‘Dualism in the Philosophy of Mind’, in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2nd edition, ed. by Donald M. Borchert (New York: MacMillan, 2006), pp. 113–122. Here Zimmerman goes some way to highlight the differences in the varieties of substance dualism. He particularly distinguishes pure substance dualism with composite substance dualism, but he holds emergent versions of substance dualism to be sufficiently distinct from the other two. He refers to Descartes as a composite substance dualist, which, as I have stated in a previous chapter, is vague and deserves distinction from say Thomistic hylomorphic varieties of composite substance dualism. The two are not the same and in fact, a Cartesian variety is similar to pure and composite versions, thus I helpfully refer to it as person-body substance dualism and compound dualism.

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17 See Eric T. Olson, ‘A Compound of Two Substances’, in Soul, Body, and Survival ed. by Kevin Corcoran (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 2001), pp. 73–88. Olson works through the difficulties of articulating a compound or composite version of substance dualism, and argues that if you are going to be a substance dualist of a Cartesian sort, then you ought to be a pure dualist. I have addressed this in the previous section. I think there is something insightful about his move, but it seems to me we can articulate more finely grained variations of a Cartesian/Pure soul along the lines of compound and composite variations. 18 Ibid. 73. 19 Also, see Descartes in the Third Meditation. See an explanation in Justin Skirry’s ‘Descartes: The Mind-Body distinction’ in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, section 5, Descartes Response to the Mind-Body Problem http://www.iep.utm.edu/ descmind/ (3 May2006; accessed on 14 April 2014). 20 See Richard Swinburne for a distinction between event causes and personal causes in The Existence of God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Also, see Swinburne in The Evolution of the Soul. Here he makes a distinction between scientific explanations and personal explanations or physical causes and agent causes. John Foster makes an argument that the interactive relation is directly rooted in Divine causation as a personal explanation in ‘A Brief Defence of the Cartesian View,’ in Soul, Body and Survival (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2001), pp. 28–29. Foster’s defence contributes to the discussion by arguing that the Cartesian view requires a ‘personal explanation’ (although he does not use this term) where God establishes an appropriate functional attachment between the soul and the body. There could be other ways in which God personally establishes this connection. One would be that he creates bodies and brains with suitable structures that host souls whereby the body/brain has a teleological structure that gives rise to a law-like relation (regular patterns of succession) between the body and soul. 21 The proponent of this view can very easily incorporate the previous response. 22 Dean Zimmerman argues that most substance dualists affirm something along these lines in ‘Dualism in the philosophy of mind,’ p. 116. He also states that most affirm the spatiality of the soul in contemporary times, but I am sceptical about this claim and do not see how souls are spatial, at least in the manner that we normally think of spatiality as being physical in nature. 23 Swinburne in The Evolution of the Soul holds to something like this. Also see John Hawthorne, ‘Cartesian Dualism,’ in Persons: Human and Divine, ed. by Peter van Inwagen and Dean Zimmerman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), see especially the concluding section. Most Cartesians today would consider themselves to be composite or compound dualists, this lends itself to some confusion and deserves disambiguation from other varieties that are composite in nature. 24 See Hasker in The Emergent Self, and ‘Souls Beastly and Human,’ in The Soul Hypothesis, ed. by Mark Baker and Stewart Goetz (London: Continuum, 2011). Hasker’s first article defending what he later calls emergent substance dualism is found in ‘Souls of Beast and of Men,’ Religious Studies vol. 10, no 3 (1974), 265–277. Hasker is famous for this novel position in the literature on philosophy of mind. In the past he referred to this position as ‘emergentism,’ but this did not sufficiently distinguish it from varieties of non-reductive physicalism that are also versions of property dualism. Now, he refers to his position as emergent substance dualism. 25 For a recent and interesting philosophical objection against Hasker’s version of emergent substance dualism and a reason to affirm Cartesianism see Kenneth Einar Himma, ‘Explaining why this body gives rise to me qua subject instead of someone else: an argument for classical substance dualism’, Religious Studies, vol. 47, no. 4 (2011), pp. 431–448. 26 Hasker, The Emergent Self, pp. 188–189. 27 Ibid. 190 and 194.

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28 Ibid. I take this from page 192 where Hasker discusses the spatial nature of the mind as encompassing the parts of the brain. 29 Ibid. 192 and 193. Hasker says, ‘the theory makes intelligible, as Cartesian dualism does not, the intimate dependence of consciousness and mental processes on brain function.’ 30 See Swinburne on mixed properties in The Evolution of the Soul on p. 7. The notion of mixed properties is a rather perplexing issue and debatable matter deserving further attention. Yet, we might be able to make sense of mixed properties in a way that I have suggested earlier in terms of functional properties actualized in terms of the mind and body. 31 Traditionally, Lutherans were traducians excluding Philip Melanchthon. Augustus H. Strong, W. G. T. Shedd, Gordon Clark, Lewis Sperry Chafer all support traducianism. Contemporary support includes but is not limited to the following: Millard Erickson, Norman L. Geisler, Robert Culver, and Robert L. Reymond. 32 ‘Souls Beastly and Human,’ p. 209. Also see The Emergent Self, pp. 170 and 196. This is not a criticism of Hasker, but simply pointing out that there may be other traditional options that are non-creationist construals of souls. 33 Tertullian, A Treatise on the Soul D.D. Ante-Nicene Fathers: vol. III. The Writing of Tertullian, trans. Peter Homes, ed. by A. Roberts and J. Donaldson (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1981 [1885 34 Ibid. 27.5. 35 Augustine, however, never firmly concluded what is true. For further explanation see E. Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Augustine, trans. by L. E. M. Lynch (London: Victor Gollancz, 1961), p. 51. 36 See Gen. 1:27; 2:2, 21; 46:27; Ex. 1:5; Ps. 51:5; Heb. 7:9–10; Rom. 5:12–13; I Cor. 15:22; Eph. 2:3; Heb. 7:9–10. These Scriptures have been used throughout Ecclesiastical history as support for traducianism. I am not arguing that Scripture yields this, or that this position is implied by these Scriptures, but one might argue that these Scriptures fit best with or are accounted for by traducianism. 37 Possibly, this is traditional in the sense that these conceptions of souls have some historical precedence. 38 This seems to be Tertullian’s view. See Tertullian, A Treatise on the Soul D.D. Ante-Nicene Fathers: vol. III. The Writing of Tertullian, trans. by Peter Homes, ed. by A. Roberts and J. Donaldson (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, repr. 1981), chaps 4 and 5. http://www.tertulian.org/anf/index.htm. Also see Swinburne, Richard, The Evolution of the Soul rev. edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 199. See also N.P. Williams, The Ideas of the Fall and of Original Sin (London: Longmans, 1927), p. 236. 39 A soul might be a simple in a very tenuous sense whereby it has essential parts that are necessary and the person cannot be reducible to those parts. 40 Hylomorphism could be worked out as a fissile variation. 41 J.P. Moreland and Scott B. Rae, Body and Soul: Human Nature and the Crisis in Ethics (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP, 2000), p. 221. Something like this is Moreland’s version of Thomist dualism. It might be objected that Aquinas explicitly stated he was a creationist, but his Thomist dualism could be worked out as a kind of emergent-traducian view and Moreland provides an example of this sort that might be a version of traducianism or emergent-creationism. 42 The age old expression: ‘more than the sum of its parts,’ applies to this position. Hylomorphism contends that there are two parts constituting persons, but persons are not reducible to those parts. 43 A modified Cartesian traducianism could be fissile in nature or parturient in nature. 44 See Oliver D. Crisp, An American Augustinian: Sin and Salvation in the Dogmatic Theology of William G.T. Shedd (Milton Keynes: Paternoster Press, 2007), pp. 30–32. Here Oliver Crisp gives a useful discussion of modified Cartesianism and how it

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might fit with traducianism. He also mentions how souls might not be fissile, but could be parturient wherein souls extrude themselves. This is the default view throughout Church History. Traditionally, Roman Catholics and the Protestant-Reformation generally tended toward accepting a creationist view of souls. See Gen. 2:7; Num. 16:22; Ps. 12:7; 139:13–14; Psalm 104:30; Eccl. 12:7; Isa. 42:5; 57:16; Jer. 1:5; Zech. 12:1; Heb. 12:9. These are scriptural passages that have been used commonly throughout Ecclesiastical history in support of creationism whether a simple and/or special creation, but I suppose this support could be used in favour of emergentist creationism – as I develop in Chapter 5. Or this could apply to platonic souls. Platonic and Cartesian souls are not exactly the same, but for purposes here I simply refer to Cartesian souls. Both views hold that the person is his/her soul. Cartesianism is more recent in the history of philosophy, therefore it is more commonly known. This is not anachronistic; I am simply saying that the two positions are conceptually similar. The two views are not the same. Plato may go further than Descartes to suggest that the material body and realm are less real than the soul, which has implications for his view pertaining to mind-body relations. For a useful resource, see Francis Siegfried, ‘Creationism,’ The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 4. (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908) (24 July 2012; accessed 14 April 2014). Human bodies are only secondarily caused by God unless one is a concurrentist wherein God would be directly involved somehow in the process. This could be in terms of ratifying. The only emergence may come from the unity-relation between the body and soul that ensues new properties that would probably be structural or somehow deducible from the unity-relation of the two substances. Some examples would include sensation, some feelings and knowledge of other bodies. Peter Lombard, Sent. II, d. xviii. Quote taken from Francis Siegfried, ‘Creationism,’ The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 4. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908, (24 July 2012; accessed on 14 April 2014). See John Foster, ‘A Brief Defence of the Cartesian View,’ in Soul, Body, and Survival: The Metaphysics of Human Persons, ed. by Kevin Corcoran (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), p. 29. I do not see any reason why God could not create souls either way and how this would drastically affect the arguments I am making here. Physical life is continuous to varying degrees. This certainly rubs against modern sensibilities where physical reality is one unified and continuous whole. On some variations of souls it requires a suitable body, which may require God’s power within the created structure. A philosophical/theological objection immediately arises when thinking of parents and their relationship to the generation of the child. The objection says something like parents have a deep connection to their children because of the procreative act. If God directly creates the soul that is identified with the person, then the parents are merely engaged in the procreative act of the animal part of humans. David Albert Jones made me aware of this in The Soul of the Embryo: An enquiry into the status of the human embryo in the Christian tradition (New York: T&T Clark, 2004), p. 106. An initial response is to say that there is more to the human body than mere physicality and that the soul is fashioned by God to be embodied. So the significance is that the parents are participating in the act of procreating a human person with God. This is no small matter. Furthermore, I think emergent-creationism may be a more halfway house between traducianism and creationism. I explore this position below. I do not think this poses a problem for creationists. It might also be argued that

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Creation and Cartesian souls human souls are apt for embodiment and that God designs particular souls for particular bodies. This may be going beyond some traditional notions of souls, but it is not contradictory with them. Take for example Cartesianism, the idea that I am strictly identified with my soul that contingently interacts with my body, these ideas are commensurate with the notion that bodies and souls are designed one for the other. A proponent of ‘special creation’ could also affirm a young-earth creation view, progressive creationism, or theistic evolution – unless on theistic evolution God is barred from interacting with creation and creating some things after the original act of creation. Michael J. Loux, Metaphysics: a contemporary introduction, third edition. (New York: Routledge, 2007), p. 105. It is not actually property-less. Michael J. Loux, Metaphysics: a contemporary introduction, pp. 101–104. Otherwise how would this kind of thing without parts and without properties that is a simple come about through a traducian mechanism? This is not a God of the gaps fallacy. At times God fills an epistemic role in our explanatory process. It seems that in cases like these there is a warrant for positing God as the explanation. Persons are such, on this construal, that they require an explanation outside the spatio-temporal world. It could be that the soul itself that is apt for and naturally embodied is a human soul. It seems on this view that the human soul has an essential property or set of properties comprising the imago Dei that are then instantiated in the soul and/or soul body union. This certainly fits with Cartesian dualism or potentially other forms of substance dualism wherein the person is identified with his/her soul. Arguably, the imago Dei is the set of properties or a property (being universal) that must be created by God and cannot come about in the natural order according to physical processes. PR stands for physical conditions in reproduction and is aptly descriptive using terms of physical science. Moreland, J.P. and Scott B. Rae. Body and Soul: Human Nature and the Crisis in Ethics (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP, 2000), p. 220. Ibid. 220. As stated before, John Foster has posited this solution to the mind-body problem and, I suppose, by extension he would posit something similar with respect to the soul’s origin in relation to the body. It is established by Divine fiat. There has been a great deal of buzz in the contemporary discussion over emergent dualisms. W.D. Hart would be one example of an emergent substance dualist. See The Engines of the Soul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). Interestingly, Hart does not endorse dualism in connection with theism, but if he did his might be categorized as similar to the position developed here. I am not sure how Hart accounts for a soul’s contingent existence apart from a supernatural entity with causal agency. Dean Zimmerman has also written on the subject of emergent substance dualism. See a useful and recent article of his ‘From Property Dualism to Substance Dualism,’ in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary, vol. LXXXIV, (2010), 119–150. This, of course, is my attempt to codify the essential elements for the purposes of developing a systematic definition. To my knowledge, no one has offered a definition of this view. As explained elsewhere, sui generis literally means deeply foundational. It is a wholly new thing when categorizing entities in ontology. It is not deducible or reducible to its constituent parts. The non-reductive physicalist or a property dualist sort might speak of the soul loosely or in layman’s terms that refer to the thoughts, intentions, and emotions of man, but not literally as if there is an immaterial substance. The person on this view is literally a physical substance with new properties of a different sort than other properties exemplified in the physical world. For an example of this view see Nancey

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Murphy, ‘Nonreductive Physicalism: Philosophical Challenges,’ in Personal Identity in Theological Perspective, ed. by Richard Lints, Michael Horton, and Mark R. Talbot (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 2006), p. 95. The advantage of emergent substance dualism is that there is actually a new substance that is distinct from the material substance. With property dualism that holds to substance materialism there is a great deal of ambiguity as to what the person as a material substance is. All of our common sense objects seem to fall short of being identified with persons. Whereas, with emergent dualism there is a substance that has conscious experience. Zimmerman insightfully develops this in his recent article, ‘From Property Dualism to Substance Dualism’. For a discussion of problems with traditional views of origins and materialist views see John Yates, ‘The Origin of the Soul: New Light on An Old Question’, Evangelical Quarterly vol. 61, no. 1 (1989), 135–140. While I do not agree with many of his conclusions concerning traditional views on origins, I find his discussion interesting and useful. William Hasker, ‘Souls Beastly and Human’, in The Soul Hypothesis, ed. by Mark Baker and Stewart Goetz (London: Continuum, 2011), pp. 211–212. While the theological issue of origins is closely and intimately related to the mind-body problem and its solutions because of the relationship between the mind and body, the two are not the same and deserve some clear disambiguation. Hasker’s essay, while very good, tends to blur these issues. Creation out of nothing may only be an event at the moment the world comes into existence. At the moment physical matter comes into existence, all of life seems to emerge through physical evolution. The problem of creation ex nihilo is raised by Timothy O’Connor in ‘Causality, Mind, and Free Will,’ in Action and Freedom, ed. by James E. Tomberlin (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), pp. 105–117. See Hasker’s response, ‘Is Materialism Equivalent to Dualism?,’ in After Physicalism, ed. by Benedikt Paul Gocke (Notre Dame: Notre Dame Press, 2012), p.187. See my contribution to this discussion, Emergence and Soul Creation (forthcoming).

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A Cartesian exploration of the soul’s origin, II An emergent creationist soul1

… a viable solution needs to consider the mental lives of human beings and animals together, rather than separately. (William Hasker, ‘Souls, Beastly and Human’ in The Soul Hypothesis, p. 211)

On the basis of the previous chapter I develop a novel constructive option within the debate on the origin of the soul, which is an expansive option within creationism more broadly construed and has some initial plausibility. Herein, I posit that emergent-creationism (i.e. the view that souls are created by God but that souls only come into existence in conjunction with their bodies in time as emergent souls or as a distinct emergent nature; where bodies, having their own properties/powers, become causally necessary for souls and vice versa) is distinct from ESDMO (i.e. Hasker’s version of emergent dualism where the soul is produced by the body and brain) and simple-creationism (i.e. the view that souls are directly and immediately created by God and attached to a body). Calling this view emergent-creationism seems a helpful way of distinguishing it from the other substance dualist (or Cartesian) variants of the soul, but it may turn out that there is a more appropriate name – as the reader will see later on in the chapter. Given the intimate relationship the soul has to the body, I suggest that the soul is a kind of soul, as I discussed early on, that has an integrated and holistic relationship to the body and the kind-nature of the soul is explanatorily made sense of in terms of the soul’s coming into existence via its structural relationship to the body. Some may see this variation of substance dualism as simply another variation of creationism, and, if it is, then it is a more finely grained construal of creationism that gives us a distinct picture of God, human origins, and God’s relationship with the world where the soul’s powers and/or properties are actualized in relation to the body/brain. Given this kind of story concerning the soul’s relationship to the body, calling it creationist would not yield simple-creationism. Most importantly, I believe this gives us a picture of Divine action in the human world that upholds creationistintuitions and has the resources to accommodate a modern evolutionary story. Additionally, it appears that it has the virtue of uniting body and soul in a more holistic and integrated fashion in terms of a more finely grained dependence of

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mind on brain, teleo-functions, and/or it posits a functionally supervenient relation between the mind and brain. Nearly all the variants of emergentcreationism I advance broadly fall under Cartesianism. With these in mind in the forthcoming chapters, I propose a variant of CSD and emergent-creationism that is Cartesian in character is the most plausible option with the resources to satisfy the Christian story of humans.2

Emergent-creationist soul (a hybrid view) At first sight, emergentism and creationism seem to be disjunctive terms. If the terms are taken to reflect the language of Hasker concerning emergentism and creationism, then the two terms in fact seem incompatible.3 Hasker’s ESDMO is the notion that physicality has the capacity or disposition to give rise to a soul, alone without Divine aid – although the soul’s emergence is ultimately explicable in terms of a theistic framework of the created world.4 Soul-creationism is incompatible with this kind of emergence because the causal efficacy of the soul’s coming into existence is directly and immediately attributable to complex material and neural processes. And God only becomes a very remote cause of the soul in the same way that he is the cause of most other objects in the physical world. However, if one takes emergence as the manner and mode by which something comes to be, then the two terms are not necessarily incompatible.5 On SC, by way of stipulation, I suggest that God creates souls directly and immediately. God is directly the cause in the sense that he utilizes no other cause to bring about the soul. Thus, God is the terminus of the causal chain. By immediate, I mean that Divine action is without mediation through other causes or events, which I described in Chapter 3. For the creationist, the creation of the soul is directly rooted in a Divine choice-event, not a process that exists prior to the choice-event or the mere event of soul-emergence. I gave some examples of SC in Chapter 3, which I will not rehearse here. I would suggest that this option on the origin of the soul gives us no direct reason for thinking that the soul exists in a particular mode or manner. Instead, the soul just does exist at the moment God creates the soul and attaches or infuses it into a body like a person who fashions a piece of metal into RAM that the person then takes and fits into a particular CPU. SC, then, is a distinctive theoretical option in the origin of souls. The picture SC gives us is different from the variation of soul-creation I put forth, and SC is likely the mental picture that many have of soul-creation. On ESDMO, the direct cause of the soul’s existence is the physicality that ushers the soul into being. If the defender of ESDMO were a theist, then God would become a remote cause of the soul where soul occurrence is explicated in terms of physical evolution. Thus, we have two very different pictures of origins. EC offers a different picture from both SC and ESDMO. By way of creation, I mean to say that the soul is directly caused to exist by a Divine choice-event. Thus, the defender of EC can affirm a creationist-intuition that souls cannot come into existence solely by physical processes of evolution, but require a

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higher rational cause – namely God. Instead, God really is the cause of the soul’s existence, yet the soul’s causal origin comes to exist in a specified manner. This is to say that God designs the world in such and such a fashion that particular souls will exist at particular times via the physical aggregate. In this way, God directly creates the soul, but the soul comes to be only in the manner it functions and exists as a complete human nature. This form of soul-creation, one might argue, includes a form of mediation, yet not the kind of mediation descriptive of traducianism or ESDMO, but a kind of mediation where God’s creation of a soul comes into being at a particular time with or dependent on the physical-aggregate. On EC, then, there are necessary conditions for the soul’s coming to be, but not necessarily sufficient conditions. Souls coming to exist necessarily depend on the physical-aggregate in which they exist and function through, yet this is not a sufficient condition for the soul’s existence and nature. In this way, EC is similar to ESDMO in that the physical aggregate has a positive causal role in the souls coming to be. This, then, has implications for the soul’s origin and gives a different picture from both SC and ESDMO. To motivate the discussion, I situate EC in a broadly Thomist metaphysics of creation. Broadly speaking, there are two ways to parse out the soul’s origination in relation to Divine action, which correspond to the topic of ‘personal’ or ‘alterity’ theism that I discussed in Chapter 1. First, one could assume God is a transcendent agent (i.e. ‘alterity’ theism). In this way, God is not an agent among other agents that we commonly experience in the world around us. Instead, he is the kind of agent that transcends our normal experience of human personal agents. God’s causal powers transcend created powers and are above yet present to normal human and biological processes in the world. As such, God’s direct creation of souls is a unique creational effect in the world that is not successively generated (temporally or diachronically) through time by previously existing physical organisms, yet the soul is not necessarily disconnected from these operations. It so happens that God causally creates the soul that comes to exist in time and God’s operations, while present to all dependent beings, are uniquely present in the soul as a substance that only comes into existence as a discrete, individual, concrete whole non-explicable by previously existing biological objects generated by the flow of events. And, we can make sense of this because God is an agent that transcends all local agents that are isolatable. Second, one could affirm that God is an immanent agent (i.e. ‘personal’ theism) similar to the way that we experience other human agents. Along these lines, God creates the soul directly, yet the soul’s existence (as a kind-human) is mediated via the processes of biological generation, but the biological generation does not ‘produce’ the soul. Instead, it may be that the soul is ‘activated,’ ‘functionally’ present, or is somehow carried along as a discrete concrete object through biological processes until its actualization as a concrete human. One way to motivate an emergent-creationist story of the human soul is by considering an older metaphysical system common to medieval Christianity as well as Reformed Scholasticism. This is the metaphysics of Thomism. Briefly,

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let me guide us through a Thomist metaphysical picture of the world as one way to think about emergent-creationism.

Thomist metaphysics of creation As I see it, EC situated in a broader Thomist view of creationism allows for a more dynamic view of creation and a more continuous view of soul-creation with the physical/natural order. What I have in mind is similar to Thomist creationism or resembles it in important respects. This is not to say that the defender of EC must be committed to Thomist variations, but it offers resources for thinking about soul-creation. My purposes here are not historical as they are a way of motivating EC. Some authors have referred to Thomas’ version of soul-creation as a kind of emergent-creationism.6 Having said this, this view has received very little attention and lacks the clarity necessary to distinguish it from SC and ESDMO. Two authors, namely William Hasker and Brian Leftow, have referred to Thomas’s view as an instance of Divine occasionalism. Leftow states, By a continuous rearranging of live matter (we’d now say: by the brain’s development), the human fetus becomes able to host the human soul, i.e. develops the full material base for the capacity to think in (what Thomas thinks is) the soul-requiring way. At that point, the capacity becomes present, and with it the individual(s) it requires. So if we leave God out of the picture, the Thomist soul is an “emergent individual.”…The law-like way braindevelopment leads to souls’ appearance may make it look like the brain’s development causally accounts for the soul’s appearance, but in this one case, Thomas is (as it were) an occasionalist.7 The idea is that there is a law-like nature between the brain and the souls coming to exist – according to physical event causation. Assuming this in conjunction with creationism would entail a denial of physical causal realism and an affirmation of occasionalism, according to Hasker and Leftow, because in this one case the law-like relation between the material aggregate and the souls coming to be is really just a manifestation of direct Divine causal activity.8 However, this seems to paint a picture of Thomas’s view that is simply inaccurate if we understand his metaphysics of causation and creation. First, Thomas’s metaphysics of creation situates the soul’s coming to exist in a dynamic causal structure. What this means is that the physical order of causes and effects are themselves, already, embedded in a causal framework. Assuming Thomist principles for contemporary times, this means that physical evolution itself is embedded in a causal framework and does not stand alone, as with the picture given above in the quotation from Leftow. There is no sense in which you can actually extricate God. Divine causal activity is always present in, through time, and with the physical order.

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Second, this causal framework is inclusive of four causes, namely, efficient, formal, material, and final causes. These causes exist in a dynamic framework and are productive principles by which God causally conserves and concurs with the natural events. Kathryn Tanner helpfully summarizes the Thomistic metaphysics of creation in the following: The end exists only in virtue of efficient causality and exerts an influence as final cause only because of the act of an efficient cause tending towards it. Similarly, a formal cause achieves actuality, in determining matter to be a particular kind, only through efficient causality. All other order of causality as Thomas understands them are in potency, therefore, vis-à-vis the founding acts of efficient causes.9 Hence, we have dynamic causal structures on Thomas’s view. Third, God utilizes secondary causes (i.e. created causes that are caused causes) in creation. In this way, God creates and designs these secondary causes to carry out a particular causal order, which means that secondary causes have a principle of operation. In this dynamic, it seems that God works in, with, and through these secondary causes. Fourth, Divine creation is one act with discrete effects. This means that all organisms are created by one Divine act in a particular order. So it could be with souls. God could be said to create souls directly, as in SC, yet mediated via the physical-aggregate. God efficiently causes the mediation, yet the soul comes into existence with and/or dependent on the physicalaggregate. Again, this mediation is not to be confused with traducianism or ESDMO. Finally, a different picture of soul-creation is available on a broadly Thomist view. On a broadly Thomist creationism, accidental changes and substantial changes come to exist by way of certain productive principles (i.e. efficient/ ultimate, formal, material, and final causality). I argue, on this basis, that we have a picture where God is dynamically and intimately involved in the affairs of the world in conjunction with soul-creation. Souls, on this picture, exist continuous with the natural order of causes in terms of their coming into existence, but the actual cause is neither explicable nor causally determined by the natural causes. Distinctively, EC has an advantage over SC and the apparent picture on substance dualism (generically construed) where these give us a picture that does not necessitate soul-creation continuity with physical causes and effects.10 While I think Thomist metaphysics of creation helps motivate an alternative picture of God’s dealings with the world and with soul-creation, I do not think a defender of EC must commit him/herself to everything Thomas affirms. Neither, does this require a Thomist variation of substance dualism.11 I move on to explore variations of substance dualism that fit naturally within EC whereby God directly creates souls that only come into existence with or on the particular physical aggregate.

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Various substance dualist iterations of EC Having established a Thomist creational metaphysic, I have argued that EC as a view of origins is situated in a metaphysical framework that is dynamic. With Aquinas, creationists assume that souls are wholly non-material and not able to come from physicality or physical processes, yet must be directly created by God. Additionally, this metaphysical perspective has openness with respect to when and, precisely, in what manner the soul comes to exist. This is possible in a Thomist framework or a similar metaphysic. Now, I wish to consider some reasons for thinking that the soul only comes into being as part of a composite or compound structure. I suggest there are two positive causal roles the physical act/aggregate might play in the soul’s coming to be. First, the physical-aggregate may be a kind of passive receptor for the soul. This means that the physical-aggregate still has a positive causal role to play, according to EC. It could play the role of a receptacle for the soul. Analogously, we have examples of something like this receptacle view. The interaction between ink and paper suggests that the paper has some positive role in the ink’s coming to be. Additionally, one example given by Stump is of the enzyme catalyzing protein. The enzyme exists independently and in a configuring manner to make it active in a dynamic structure (i.e. as a part of a larger whole).12 Second, it may be that God embeds the order of operation in the broader causal framework of the natural order.13 This is not to say that physicality is simply endowed with the disposition for soul-emergence, taking God out of the picture, but to say that there is a broader causal framework where Divine activity is present with physicality in the natural order. From here, I move on to various iterations of EC. In Chapter 2, I briefly parsed out different types of souls that correspond to a categorization of substance dualism (e.g. pure, compound, and composite). I suggested a hybrid view of relational-souls and kind-souls where souls bear a first-order property that actualizes (i.e. as a second-order property) in relation to the body. In this way, we can see how it is natural to account for souls as compounds in an emergentist view of human nature. Otherwise, if we construe souls as kind-souls (i.e. the second categorization), then souls have an intrinsic relation to bodies, which one might cash out in terms of composite substance dualism.14 I parse these out as variations of EC. I put forward two differing EC iterations and two distinct variations of each view. First, I put forward a dynamic-structures soul view. A dynamic-structures soul view is a kind of compound substance dualism in contrast to pure or composite substance dualism. On this view, the soul comes to exist in an appropriate dynamic structure where the soul functions according to the physical arrangement (i.e. bodily/neural part). A distinct variation of this view is a dependent-Cartesian soul view, the notion that souls intimately depend on the neural arrangement that mediates the soul’s existence. Second, I put forward a complex-configuration soul view. On this view, we have a form of composite substance dualism distinct from compound and Cartesian dualism. Naturally,

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the soul exists as a structured entity that unites with the physical-part – hence a complete human nature.15 Similar yet distinct, I suggest that we can conceive of a soul that comes to exist in virtue of two-parts composing an individualized human nature (construed in terms of powers not property-universals). Call this the Thomist-powers soul view.16 One view affirms that the soul is created directly by God, but only obtains when the brain reaches a specified level of complexity for hosting a soul, which will be identified here as the dynamic-structures soul view.17 A soul based on this view is dependent on a material whole for which the soul-part and physicalpart become one dynamic structural unity. This would seem to require some variety of compound dualism or, possibly, composite substance dualism whereby the soul depends in an intimate manner on a sufficiently complex brain and may not interact with the physical world until the physical/neural-part begins to exist. It may be, then, that the functionality of the soul occurs when the body becomes the host for the soul. The soul would not be a complete substance (in a broad sense of substance) in the sense that it does not form a complete human nature. With this view, it seems that a sufficiently complex human brain/body implies a human soul because there would be no reason to think that a human body would not have a human soul. In a Thomistic metaphysic of creation there is a continuity that would not seem to allow for the discontinuity that souls would come to exist without their bodies or that human bodies would not have souls because this is just the natural state of affairs for a complete human substance.18 The body and soul together make a full and complete person. One construal of a modified Cartesianism yields a form of emergentcreationism. A modified Cartesianism says that persons are souls and the neural-part that is the secondary agent for those souls gives rise to a human person in the process of the gametes coming together at syngamy (call this the dependent-Cartesian soul view). If we take the soul to have a dependent relation on the brain, then this is not necessarily a version of hylomorphism wherein the soul and body are constituents of one existing entity, namely a human person. One could situate this view in a broad Thomistic metaphysics of creation (or some similar metaphysic) whereby God works through, with, or over secondary causation, but Divine causality is ultimately responsible for actualizing human nature. Having said this, the Cartesian is not required to affirm a full-blown Thomistic metaphysics of causation concerning form and matter.19 This requires further development. If God created the soul logically prior (not metaphysically, actually, or naturally prior) to the soul’s supervening on or arising from the brain, yet its proper order or manner of being were with the bodily aggregate (i.e. as a concrete part of the whole compound structure), then this would not yield SC. Instead, humans exist with natural/normal relations and properties pertaining to the respective parts (body and soul).20 The essentiality of origins seems to follow from a hybrid view of souls in relation to human nature. At a minimum, this would appear to give us a picture distinct from SC. The physical or neural

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correlate is necessary for the soul’s emergence in the physical world. Therefore, the soul or human nature emerges from the brain in virtue of a sufficiently complex brain or merely an existent brain, but the brain is not a sufficient causal explanation for what the soul is by nature – instead there could be a law-like dependence relation of soul on the neural-body arrangement. God is the cause of the soul’s nature having created it directly, but it only obtains in time or as a temporal effect in relation to the physical-aggregate. One might construe this relationship between souls and their bodies/brains along teleological lines. Teleo-functional properties are those properties, I suggest, that are internal to the soul and are dispositional in nature.21 Without the body/ brain in place, the soul would not function properly and specific functions naturally attributable to the human soul would lie dormant. It is important to emphasize, at this point, that this is not a form of hylomorphism. Yet it does share some important elements with it because the soul requires the body to function with respect to its sensual powers and, possibly, other powers. The functionality of the soul requires the neural and bodily arrangement, hence a variation compound of substance dualism that is also emergentist in nature. Arguably, the soul only comes to exist in the manner in which it actualizes in a full human nature. Thus, on this modification of Cartesianism there are necessary conditions for the emergence of souls/persons and a sufficient condition whereby God somehow creates the soul directly with the physical-part or through the physical-part.22 One can articulate the second iteration in different ways depending on how one construes the relationship between the soul and body and the nature of a human soul. To begin, let us consider one variety that is, arguably, a position at home in the Christian tradition and is a version of composite substance dualism. Some have argued that Thomas’ view or a broadly Thomistic view is a kind of composite substance dualism, which coheres with an emergent-creationist soul. By way of preface, I am not suggesting that this is actually Thomas’ view nor am I suggesting that he would have construed the brain in this way.23 I am also not suggesting that he had worked out his view in the context of physical evolution for this was not a concern for him. Yet, taking Thomism more broadly seems compatible with physical evolution. On a Thomist account, to all appearances the soul/mind seems to emerge from a sufficiently developed brain.24 Thomas’ view could be a version of emergent-creationism in that the human soul is not generated from pre-existing stuff or from a previous soul, but God creates something with or through the physical organism.25 Alternatively, it may be that God creates the soul through the physical act of fertilization and has some causal influence over it. As a result, there is a dynamic interaction between God’s instantiating a ‘rational soul’ in the body and the material stuff that contributes to the emergence of a human nature (call this the complexconfiguration soul view). For the human person, the emergent process is a dynamic between physical generation and God’s causal activity with it.26 The previous souls/forms of bodies that come about in evolution, on Thomas’s

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view, reorganize and transform or new soul/forms replace as a new substance with a ‘rational or intellectual soul.’27 There would, then, seem to be some kind of emergence taking place whereby some new thing comes to exist or emerges from the composite of the ‘rational soul’ and the body. It may be that a new human soul emerges or a complete human substance emerges. This human substance is a result of the soul causally transforming or replacing the previous form of the body thereby bringing about a new soul. This is sufficiently distinct from the Cartesian version listed above whereby the soul emerges or suitably depends on a sufficiently complex neural structure as its base whereby new properties emerge. In a sense, this view requires the soul/form to bring about the new human person. Hence, the kind of emergence you might say reverses. On this variation of Thomism, it does not seem that the physical aggregate from physical evolution is sufficient for causing a ‘rational soul.’ In fact, the ‘rational soul’ is the kind of thing that requires a different causal explanation of origins. This is so because rational activity is higher than and distinct from bodily or neural acts. Patrick Lee and Robert George in discussing Hasker’s emergent substance dualism argue that the soul requires a different kind of causal emergence than Hasker’s version of emergence. They state: As Aquinas points out, an entity can come to be only in the manner in which it exists; if it exists through itself (not dependent on the whole of which it is a part), then it can only come to be through itself (though caused by another), that is, directly, not through the coming to be of another. Hence, the human soul must be directly caused to be, not produced through the coming to be of the whole (the human being) of which it is a part.28 In the Lee and George view, the human person is one unified animal, hence on their articulation of Thomas’s view we do not have substance dualism but a form of ‘animalism’ that is also a form of creationism.29 Additionally, the soul exists only in the way that it comes to function or is actual as a being.30 What is interesting about the Lee and George view is that the brain cannot create the soul. God must causally act to bring about a human person. Without discussing what Thomas affirmed, I believe that a broadly Thomistic view that has some emergent elements and is a form of creationism does not entail animalism. I believe Thomas’s view is a form of composite substance dualism. If in fact the two concrete parts, body and soul, are distinct, and the soul can persist without the body then we can have a form of composite substance dualism. It seems that Thomas affirms a distinction in virtue of the soul existing independently as a modal possibility, hence substance dualism.31 Furthermore, if a broadly Thomist view holds to a Platonic or Augustinian view of the immaterial part or an Aristotelian soul as form, then one would have substance dualism (or substantive dualism).32 It may be that the new substance is new in a sui generis sense, or that the substance reorganizes with the immaterial part. The former would hold to the strongest form of emergence that intimately depends on Divine soul-creation of

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a rational nature situated in a dynamic causal context and complex configuration.33 The latter would hold to a weaker form of emergence, namely the emergence of new properties and powers – hence a complete human nature, arguably. Both would fit into a metaphysic of creation whereby God created the soul that emerges from a suitable bodily/brain aggregate as a discrete temporal effect. Having said this, I am not suggesting that this is in fact Thomas’ view, but broadly construed as a modified form of Thomism or at least in agreement with much of Thomist thought that is a form of creationism and emergentism.34 Both could be instances whereby the soul comes from the bodily aggregate and God creates the soul as its primary cause. Another variation in terms of powers is broadly Thomistic. One could interpret Thomas’ view or a view that is broadly Thomist as a form of composite substance dualism in terms of natures as ‘powers’ not necessarily properties construed as universals (call this the Thomist-powers soul view).35 On this view, human nature is composed of two concrete parts that are not complete as a substance until they unite as one nature. Moreover, natures are powers that are dispositional and obtain when the appropriate parts are united. When the parts unite the two become a unity, or in this case, an individualized human nature. A human nature can be said to be a composite of body and soul, such that, when the two come together a new sui generis nature/substance emerges with powers, or, on a weaker version, new powers emerge respective of the nature that are not reducible to their parts (this could be construed along compound and nature-emergence or composite and substance-emergence lines, as I have described them). For example, these powers include freedom of the will, consciousness, and moral awareness. These are distinctive powers of a human nature. The body exists through physical generation, but physicality alone does not generate an immaterial part. The immaterial part could be the concrete part God creates that is situated in a dynamic causal process and a complex configurative state. When the two unite, a human nature emerges as an individualized substance that is complete in nature. This is one manner in which to interpret Thomas’s composite dualism that is arguably a kind of substance dualism, emergentism, and creationism. This version of creationism has many of the benefits found in ESDMO and may have some benefits of its own. There are other views that could be a form of emergent-creationism. Emergent-creationism, then, is sufficiently different from the version of emergence from a material thing alone.

Summarizing the highlights of EC First, I argue that EC has an advantage with respect to the mystery surrounding personal existence. Given the above, EC could account, it seems, for evolutionary development, the neural similarities between higher-level animals and the tight connection between mind and brain because of the dynamic structure in which souls and/or a complete human nature comes to exist, which gives a picture of continuity between souls and the natural order.36 It is also a version

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of creationism because it requires some kind of direct involvement on the part of God. In light of this, EC seems to have an immediate advantage over ESDMO with respect to the mysterious nature of individual emergence because with ESDMO there is no explanation of how physicality gives rise to consciousness or a conscious subject.37 There is something deeply mysterious about emergentism where the self emerges from physical stuff alone and exists potentially in matter.38 A defender of EC can, arguably, better handle this mystery. This leads to the notion of miracles concerning souls. Second, I argue that EC does not involve a miraculous event. On the EC view, it could be that the emerging self is an instance of what some would consider a miracle similar to the resurrection within Divine providence.39 However, it seems that on a Thomistic metaphysics of causation/creation this is not a miracle on par with SC where God intervenes in the causal nexus of physical laws (assuming one of the modern views whereby physical laws are regularities of succession). The soul/mind emergence requires a cause beyond naturalistic explanation and human agency in a, somewhat, different way from the view of SC offered above. Instead, this view does not violate laws of nature (again assuming a modern view of laws) nor does it require a random Divine act like that of other miracles (e.g. turning water to wine, the physical resurrection, or physical healing). The occurrence of the soul in time is a discrete effect of God’s creative act. In the end, it seems there is no violation of physical law, soul-occurrences are common (not random), yet physical generation of souls seem to provide an inadequate grounding for soul occurrence. The creative act of the soul occurs in the natural order, yet physical processes alone do not causally ground and fully explain this event. Hence, we could say that this event of souls coming to be is unique in contrast to other natural events, but not necessarily a miracle comparable with the physical resurrection. This leads to the natural relationship between body and soul. Third, I argue that EC has the advantage of providing a more natural and non-ad-hoc unity relation between soul and body in contrast to pure varieties of dualism and SC. One might argue this provides an adequate story for compound/composite dualism and the unity of the body and soul. This would apply to either hylomorphic variations of the soul or non-hylomorphic variations without sliding into a pure variety of substance dualism. On hylomorphic variations, the soul has intrinsic potency and exists in the physical body. On nonhylomorphic variations, this is not the case. Arguably, according to Cartesian compound dualists, the two concrete parts are substances in their own rights yet in relation to the other find completion for human nature. This moves beyond some sort of causal interaction to positing a union in terms of the telos of the natures intrinsic to both body and soul, respectively. Thus, similar to hylomorphism there is a teleological explanation that brings about a union between the two concrete parts. The difference lies in that the soul is not intrinsically material nor has material, but has an overlap of properties or being that allow this union to occur. The causal history of both body and soul is such that they come to exist together as one unit (i.e. mereological aggregate), and

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the natural habitat of both is union with the other. This is not the same as saying both parts are essential for the surviving soul/person, even if there is reason to affirm the fact of the original existence including both body and soul. While both parts have some relation to generation, they do not exist in the same way, as argued above concerning ESDMO. It seems that in both views a human body is generated physically and the individualized soul comes into existence immediately upon the human body (and brain) reaching some level of physical and neural complexity or when the appropriate genetic material unites. On SC, the soul is created directly and immediately by God and attached to the body or created in the body.40 Divine arbitration or mental-physical laws that God establishes in the design and structure of the world establish the soul-body relation. On EC, it is true to say that God creates the soul directly but it seems that there is some causal relation the soul has to the body, which is part of the warp and woof of the created world. This causal relation is not one of physicality causing the soul to exist, but it seems to have the secondary causal role of functionality or existence of the soul. The soul then comes to be via the body in the sense that the ink is received by paper. An analogy of a painter painting could help grasp how this is the case. What this means in terms of origin and the nature of the soul is significant. EC, then, provides a natural and/or more intuitive basis for the soul-body union in contrast to an ad-hoc basis. The body then serves as a kind of base for soul functioning. The two parts have the same origin or a very intimate relationship to that origin. The body also provides the functional apparatus for the soul. This story provides a fuller picture of the compound or composite nature of the soul and the body by fleshing out the relationship of the soul to the body.41 Two unwelcome conclusions follow from the SC variation of soul-creation, because of the problem of hypothetical ‘gappyness.’ First, it seems conceivable that God could create a human soul that does not become embodied at any time. Second, it seems conceivable that a human body could come into existence yet not a human soul. This seems very odd, contrary to appearances, and seems to have problematic implications.42 All of the variations on the mind-body and human nature listed above fit naturally within the metaphysics of creation where God is dynamically involved in the physical creation (not merely a causal part) through secondary causation. As I have said, in EC, the soul requires a unique and higher cause beyond the physical order, but comes to exist by, with, and/or through the physical aggregate (i.e. human body/brain). What are the theological benefits from emergent-creationism? First, EC offers one theological benefit when ascribing a positive causal role to the parents in the procreative act. A common and intuitive objection to SC is that no positive causal role can be ascribed to the parents of a child. The objection is that God is the direct and immediate creator of the soul, such that there appears to be no other explanatory role available.43 At most, on SC, parents have a positive causal role in producing the physical aggregate to which God happens to attach a particular soul. However, there is a theological problem for SC. SC seems to

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undermine the intuition that parents have some positive causal role in the production of children. EC is different. As I explained above, the production of the soul on EC occurs in the natural order of causes and effects such that the physical aggregate has a mediating role for the soul’s coming to be. Thus, while soul-existence is highly specified and unique pointing beyond itself, it is still a result within the natural process. Consequently, human beings are justified in holding the belief that they have some positive causal role in the production of children. Second, defenders of EC have the resources to avert another potential objection against SC from the arbitrary relation of soul and body. On SC there is no reason to suppose this soul should be related to the body with which it interacts. The relationship of the soul to the body is completely arbitrated by Divine choice on SC, yet this is not so on EC. Defenders of EC can respond by claiming that souls exist in the natural order of causes and effects, such that we have a metaphysical accounting for the soul-body relationship, which satisfies our basic experiences of being embodied. And, this is so because of the teleological relationship souls have to bodies where souls exist in a dynamic structure. Again, this might assume a hybrid view of souls where souls have dispositional properties and capacities that occur or actualize in relation to the body. Another related problem occurs for the defender of SC. On SC, it is conceivable that some soul could come to exist without a body or some body without a soul. Apart from Divine ethical problems, there is no metaphysical reason to deny this possibility. Once again, EC has an advantage in that souls come to exist and function in a structure as a part of a compound structure or as a part of a composite entity such that it is natural to assume where there is a human body there is a soul. EC has advantages over ESDMO. First, apart from the already mentioned advantage of the unlikely nature of material stuff producing souls, there is the advantage for grounding the nature of the soul as a higher entity than other physical entities in the natural world. The proponent of ESDMO might respond by saying that this might be a problem within a naturalistic framework but not in a theistic framework where the physical has a designed teleology. However, it seems the problem is in saying that physicality is endowed with the stuff that causally produces souls. While the notion of affirming human uniqueness from other organisms in terms of souls is becoming an unpopular belief, it is a doctrinal belief that finds much traction in the Christian tradition.44 Second, there is an obvious objection to ESDMO from the Christian tradition. ESDMO does not fall under any traditional categories on the debate of the origin of the soul.45 Philosophers and theologians with ecclesiastical ties should be reticent to affirm such a position out of sync with traditional teachings. Contrastively, EC can naturally be categorized as soul-creation in the spirit of Christian thought. ESDMO does not resemble Origen’s pre-existence soul view nor does it resemble creationism. ESDMO has some similarities to traducianism, but it is far removed from what traditional theologians would consider traducianism. According to traducianism, God creates one soul directly and

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immediately, at minimum. Whereas ESDMO maintains that all souls are produced through biological evolutionary processes.

Summing up the factors of an EC First, as put forward by both Hasker and Leftow, there is one variation of emergent-creationism that is a form of occasionalism. As stated above, Hasker and Leftow see a Thomist version as an instant of Divine occasionalism. This is so on the basis that the body appears to cause the existent soul to emerge, yet if God is actually the primary cause then we have a form of occasionalism. This is only so if we grant that emergentism mutually excludes an outside cause and we assume that the physical part provides a sufficient causal explanation for the soul.46 However, this may be granting too much. For example, if we take it that the hylomorphist soul is distinct, from the body, and that the body does not have the sufficient potency to bring about a human soul, then we have reason to look elsewhere for a cause. The metaphysical story may look rather different whereby both the body and the soul are constituent parts of a human being such that God utilizes the animal body and creates a soul through it or with it. This would issue in a distinct human nature (the dynamic structure in which the soul comes to exist). Otherwise, the soul and body as parts would be incomplete in terms of a human nature. The animal body would not be sufficient for a human being and the soul would only come to exist in the manner of its nature. Would this hylomorphic variation of dualism entail occasionalism? Occasionalism does not necessarily follow. It would entail a version of property/ nature emergence or substance emergence. It is easy to see why Hasker and Leftow would so quickly dismiss occasionalism because of its undermining our common sense and the ensuing dilemma of agnosticism regarding cause and effect. The following features of EC are not, necessarily, mutually exclusive. Instead I see them as part of the novel position I put forward. Second, one might think that the functional dependence of soul on body requires a kind of emergence whereby the directly created soul and/or human substance (construed broadly) is actually mediated (i.e. in terms of the physical aggregate) or secondarily caused by a sufficiently complex brain body arrangement.47 Above, I called this sort of view a dynamic-structures soul view. On this view, the soul comes to exist and functions in the context of a dynamic structure. This might be a variation of supervenient dualism in a loose sense of the term supervenience. Cartesian-dualism whereby persons are strictly identified with their immaterial parts, could be construed as having a tight fine-grained dependence of the soul on brain. This construal may yield a loose supervenient dependence relation (i.e. functional supervenience). The process seems to be inverted whereby the soul comes to function and its existence is mediated by a sufficiently complex neural structure. Namely, the physical-part of the Cartesian soul is literally a part in the sense that it completes the powers of the soul through a teleological relationship. The soul is functionally dependent upon the physical-part, yet the physical-part is a contingent part of the soul’s nature (construed broadly in

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terms of teleological properties in a compound structure). This view is distinct from hylomorphic varieties with interesting and significant parallels to it. Third, another variation of emergent-creationism is a complex-configuration soul view. The kind of emergence is either a property or nature (i.e. as properties or powers) emergence. This version of EC is distinct from the previous in that it is a composite substance dualism. On variations of Thomist dualism, it would seem that the emergent nature or substance occurs via the newly created soul. An Augustinian construal of the immaterial part would be the concrete part that actually transforms the body into a human body. An Aristotelian construal of the immaterial part might see the new nature as emergent from and dependent upon the two concrete parts uniting. This new nature could be construed as a new substance – a hylomorphic substance. Variations of Thomistic substance dualism fall under this kind of property/nature emergence. As stated above, both Platonic/Augustinian and Aristotelian construals of the immaterial part seem to be variations of composite emergent-creationism whereby the soul exists at the moment the bodily aggregate does as the soul’s secondary cause. The immaterial part on this view either brings about the emergence of the new body (e.g. Platonic/Augustinian construal) or brings about a new nature in virtue of the two concrete parts (Aristotelian construal). Both variations lend themselves to a kind of dependence view where secondary causation is at work.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have put forward an alternative to the various options in the debate over the origin of the soul. I have argued that this alternative is either a novel position or a more finely grained variation of soul-creationism. Either way, it seems to me that EC, as I construe it above, is sufficiently distinct from SC and gives a picture beginning to resemble ESDMO. In the end, objectors may find problems with this view, but it still deserves a place in the discussion. Some may object that EC should not be called ‘emergentism,’ and maybe this is true, but I wonder what term might be more appropriate.48 Setting aside these matters for the present discussion, one thing is clear: that EC deserves further reflection and consideration in the debate over the soul’s origin. In the remaining parts of A Cartesian Exploration I will draw from the variations of substance dualism and the various models on the soul’s origin as ways of constructively solving certain traditional dogmatic problems. On the basis of this chapter, I discuss this novel view of the soul-body by explicitly exploring the supposed ‘relation’ uniting the body and soul (a related problem is the problem from embodiment) through the lens of Scripture, Nicene Christianity, and scientific concerns in the next chapter. My objective is modest in that I seek to motivate a story that supplies some content for thinking about this significant issue that is often articulated as a worry or an objection to Cartesian substance dualism in general. I conclude that the data do not preclude Cartesianism as an option for consideration in the Christian theology, but that some variant of emergentism provides a more natural accounting.

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Notes 1 The present chapter is a modification of my previous publication, ‘Emergent Creationism: Another Option in the Origin of the Soul Debate,’ Religious Studies, vol. 50 no. 3 (September 2014), pp. 321–339. 2 Once again, the present chapter is an initial exploration of what I call emergentcreationism. There is something about the functionality of the soul that seems to require or depend on the body for the full use of its powers, but it does not yield Hasker’s variant of emergent substance dualism. Certainly there is more work needed on advancing a more finely grained treatment of emergence situated in the emergent dualist literature, but such is at least as plausible as Hasker’s version of emergent substance dualism. In a forthcoming article, I make this case that some variant of a modified or revised creationist-dualism with teleo-functions, emergent properties, or something similar is just as initially plausible as Hasker’s ESDMO, see, ‘Safe House Souls: Bodily Charged Souls, Responding to Hasker’s “Souls, Beastly, and Human.”’ 3 We could draw from a dynamic and transcendent view of Divine action and secondary causes, which I offer below as an option. Otherwise, it is safe to refer to human beings as emergent in the sense of property-nature emergence, which is distinct from ESDMO. 4 I am not suggesting that this precludes God creating material objects with those intrinsic powers at the beginning of time. 5 See J.P. Moreland for differing levels of emergence in Consciousness and the Existence of God: A Theistic Argument (New York: Routledge, 2008), p. 21. 6 See Eleonore Stump, Aquinas: Arguments of the Philosophers (New York: Routledge, 2003), p. 207. Stump, after quoting Aquinas, defines his view as a kind of human nature emergence or soul emergence and creationism. She says, ‘That is why, he says, the soul is created in the body, and souls are produced simultaneously with human bodies, at the culmination of human generation.’ Later on, she states, ‘On the one hand, unlike the forms of other material objects, every soul is directly created by God, as an individual thing in its own right, with its own configuration. On the other hand, like the form of any material object, it exists in the composite it configures, and it comes into existence only with that composite, not before it.’ 7 See Hasker, The Emergent Self, pp. 195–196. Also see Brian Leftow, ‘Souls Dipped in Dust,’ in Soul, Body and Survival, ed. by Kevin Corcoran (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), p. 128. The argument proffered is a difficult one to accept. First, the appropriate base for hosting the soul that thinks, ought to be distinguished from the capacity to think. If one were to grant this, that it seems that when the brain is an appropriate host the capacity to think occurs, then it does make some sense but this is a strong claim in itself. Second, to leave God out of the picture is to assume something other than a Thomist view of creation and providence. For the sake of the argument, we can grant this much. 8 Ibid. 196. 9 Kathryn Tanner, God and Creation in Christian Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), p. 63. 10 The benefit over Hasker’s emergentism, I will discuss further below. In short, one benefit is that it still requires Divine creation, and does not root the causal explanation of souls in physicality. 11 I am not definitively stating that Thomas was a substance dualist. I realize there is much disagreement in the literature. While I take him to articulate a variation of substance dualism, I realize that some would categorize him in the monist camp. For my purposes, offering a careful reading of Thomas is not my concern. 12 See Eleonore Stump, Aquinas: Arguments of the Philosophers (New York: Routledge, 2003), p. 205. She proceeds to argue that Aquinas’ view is that God directly creates

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Creation and Cartesian souls the soul, yet the soul is not created before the body and is not somehow infused in the body (see p. 207). Thus, this ‘configured configurer,’ as Stump calls it, is directly created by God only coming into existence as a part of the composite whole. What is not clear, yet intimated in Stump’s writing, is the positive role the matter plays just that the soul only comes to exist with the physical-aggregate. Maybe this is enough to get at EC by distinguishing it from SC, but I think we can say more – as I am doing so here. This would seem to yield a Transcendent-Agent model of Divine causation in contrast to an Immanent-Agent model, but I do think one can affirm the latter in conjunction with some variations of emergent-creationism that I consider below. Having said this, a Transcendent-Agent model would look something like Hasker’s ESD with affirming the notion that the brain produces a soul in its own right. Other variations of emergent-creationism could yield nature emergence. Thanks to Jonathan Chan for helping clarify these distinctions. This would seem to be an instance of nature emergence whereby it would be natural to account for the notion that souls exist with their bodies. This could be construed as a substance emergence, if we assume a Transcendent-Agent model of Divine causation (explicated by Kathryn Tanner, God and Creation in Christian Theology, chap. 1). I am assuming that the view of God’s timelessness is coherent, but do not wish to enter into this debate here. This would not rule out the view that God is timeless before the creation of the world and in time at the moment of creation. These seem to be compatible. The difficulty is accounting for Thomas’ belief that the soul could somehow persist without the body upon somatic death. However, the situation is different from a concrete part’s natural state in which it comes to exist and the possibility of saying that it can exist as a detached part. Furthermore, one could work this out in such a way as to include aspects of an Immanent-Agent model of Divine causation, which would seem to require a nature emergence. See Paul Hoffman, Essays on Descartes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 37 (‘Cartesian Composites’). Here Hoffman describes the soul and body, according to Descartes, as substances considered alone yet in relation to the other as one complete human being. While Hoffman ultimately takes this in a hylomorphist direction, stating that Descartes’ teleological view of the soul and body is a form of hylomorphism with substance dualist tendencies, it seems to me that such an interpretation is unnecessary. See Robert Koons, Realism Regained (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), see especially chap. 16. It could be that the soul/person is created directly, but the functionality of the soul or coming to exist as causally interactive with the physical world is mediated via the body. This could be an example of Richard Swinburne’s view that seems to be creationist with some emergent elements. See his The Evolution of the Soul. It is not clear that it is emergent-creationism because Swinburne does not spell out in detail how the soul and body are related, if the soul is independent from the body and to what extent it might be. This could be a form of person-body dualism whereby the soul is a simple that only emerges from the brain and requires the brain to function. In fact, for Thomas material objects already have ‘form’ (i.e. an internal principle). If there is a human brain, then there is a human soul as the form of the brain. This soul communicates to the brain/body. Brian Leftow, ‘Souls Dipped in Dust’, in Soul, Body, and Survival: Essays on the Metaphysics of Human Persons, ed. by Kevin Corcoran (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001). See also Eleonore Stump, ‘Non-Cartesian Substance Dualism and Materialism without Reductionism’, Faith and Philosophy vol. 12 (October 1995),

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520. At the point the rational soul is in the human organism there is a unity that takes place and a human person emerges, which then is the hypostasis for the emergent powers. This may sound non-scholastic to some. This may be a more Platonic or Augustinian interpretation of the soul/form as a part that communicates to the body and suffuses in it. My goal, once again, is not a close reading of Thomas on the mind-body relation. I leave this to others to figure out precisely what it is that Thomas says. For a useful reading of Thomas on the mind-body, see Norman Kretzmann, ‘Philosophy of Mind,’ in The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), chap. 5. Something like Stump’s configured configurer, which is distinct from a dynamicstructures view whereby the soul comes into being dependent on the brain in a compound structure. See the discussion by Robert Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A Philosophical Study of Summa Theologia 1a 75–89 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 126–130. As Pasnau discusses, there is some disagreement about the nature and origin of the previous forms/souls and what happens when the body reaches a higher level of complexity and there is a new form/soul added. It seems most natural to take Aquinas as saying that the sensory soul/form is not destroyed, but reorganized with the ‘rational soul,’ thus substantial reorganization occurs. So, depending on one’s interpretation on the nature of the soul, the soul must somehow interact with the body as the bodies form to become a human form. Thus, the gestation process is necessary and God’s causal work of instantiation of the ‘rational soul’ is necessary, thus providing the sufficient conditions for emergence. It does not make a difference with respect to EC if Thomas was a Platonist or Aristotelian on the soul, it still entails a view that is different from SC and ESDMO. This does not entail occasionalism, as Leftow and Hasker have suggested. Patrick Lee and Robert P. George, Body-Self Dualism in Contemporary Ethics and Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 71. Ibid, chap. 1 (pp. 66–70). The notion that human persons are animal organisms that have a distinct organic nature in virtue of the ‘rational soul.’ George and Lee define an animal as a bodily entity on p. 4. However, implicit in the notion of the created soul is an ontological distinction. If one were to interpret the created soul as the part that brings about the emergence of a new entity – namely, a human person ‑ then this is a form of emergentism. On the other hand, if one interprets the created soul/ form of the body as the person that only comes to exist as a form/matter unity, then you might have a different kind of emergence. See Peter Burrell, Freedom and Creation in Three Traditions (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), p. 61. This is because of Thomas’ metaphysics of act. Thomas assumes this in several places. One place in particular is in his Summa Theologica on ‘Powers of the Soul,’ Q. 77 Article 7. Richard Swinburne has recently affirmed that Thomas was a substance dualist. See Swinburne, Mind, Brain, and Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 171–173. In fact, Swinburne, surprisingly, goes so far to claim that Thomas’s view of the soul-body relationship is the Plato-Descartes tradition. Thus, this would rule out Aristotelian or hylomorphic-monism, which is a recognized position in the literature. See Brian Leftow, ‘Souls Dipped in Dust,’ in Soul, Body and Survival. This may entail a tertium quid or third kind of thing. If it does, then it still seems to me that the two parts are modally distinct, hence a form of substance dualism. This or something like it seems to be Eleonore Stump’s interpretation of Aquinas’ view of the soul’s origin. See Stump in Aquinas (New York: Routledge, 2003), pp. 206–218. This also may be the view of Moreland in Body and Soul. Although

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Creation and Cartesian souls Moreland refers to his view as traducian in nature, it could very easily be a form of emergent-creationism. See Michael C. Rea in ‘Hylomorphism Reconditioned’, in Philosophical Perspectives, vol. 25, issue 1, (2011), 341–358. Rea develops a hylomorphic model that avoids certain difficulties with traditional hylomorphic distinctions of the universal/particular, act/potency, and the primitive nature of inherence. Also see Michael Rea, ‘Hylomorphism and the Incarnation’, in The Metaphysics of the Incarnation, ed. by Anna Marmodoro and Jonathan Hill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), chap. 7. It is easy to see how this might better satisfy the assumptions of persons who are more scientifically and evolutionary minded than the ‘special creation’ view. EC does not leave the emergence of conscious persons to something contrary to consciousness, but articulates a theoretical explanation by bringing God into the process. Hasker’s view and others who assume something similar must also affirm mysterian assumptions about the physical. I only intend the meaning of ‘miracle’ to convey the idea that this is unique within God’s creative work not that it is a violation of ‘regulative succession’ of events. It seems to me that there is a gap in the natural world of cause and effect. The appearance of human beings in the natural world is unaccounted for solely in terms of physical cause and effect. If by miracle one means something that cannot occur in the physical causal nexus without outside influence, then it may be a miracle distinct from accidental change that occurs by normal natural events. However, if one means that it is not normal or a regular occurrence in nature, then this would not be the case for the existence of souls occur with great regularity and normality in the physical world. There is an established continuity between souls and their existing at the moment of bodily conception or some time shortly thereafter. This sort of occurrence cannot be caused by natural events in the same way that other physical events occur nor is it miraculous in the same way as the physical resurrection, which is unique, highly specified, and cannot be caused or explained by nature. For a discussion in Thomas on the matter of miracles see ST I, Q. 105 Art. 7, 520. The defender of SC could affirm the appearance of soul-continuity with physical evolution. It seems rather odd to think of conscious-making properties in themselves without a proper concrete particular of the kind of thinking that is conscious. See William Hasker’s development of problems for traditional substance dualism which he identifies with creationist-dualism in ‘Souls Beastly and Human,’ in The Soul Hypothesis (New York: Continuum, 2011), pp. 209–211. He raises other similar ‘unappealing’ consequences of traditional dualism (i.e. creationist-dualism), but gives no recognition to the kind of view I am putting forward here. David Albert Jones made me aware of this problem in his work, The Soul of the Embryo: An enquiry into the status of the human embryo in the Christian tradition, p. 106. This becomes an important theological datum in accounting for deep and meaningful relationships with others and with God. Additionally, the soul is the concrete part accounting for the beatific vision and theosis where we have the basis or ground in terms of the soul. Souls are then the foundation for these higher-order processes that transcend the physical. I realize this claim may seem odd in contemporary times and would seem to rule out one overwhelming theological reason from the tradition for the Christian to reject materialism, I would suggest that it is in tension with the common tendency found within Christian theology throughout the tradition. Furthermore, it seems to undermine how it is that Christians have read and constructively used Scripture throughout the tradition as I demonstrated in Chapter 2. These reasons seem to me like good reasons to reject materialism. This seems like a big assumption to make, however.

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47 Secondary causes are causes that have been caused. This is common to Thomism where second causes receive their power and directedness from a prior first and efficient cause. 48 One possibility may be something like interfacial substance dualism or activational substance dualism, which is what I explore in ‘Safe House Souls: Bodily Charged Souls’ (forthcoming).

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A Cartesian exploration of soul embodiment Can souls satisfy evolution, Cartesian intuitions, and the Christian emphasis on the body?

Theistic dualists like Descartes further understood the mind-body relation in terms of goodness: being materially embodied is good. (Charles Taliaferro, ‘Emergentism and Consciousness,’ in Soul, Body and Survival, p. 71)

If the body is not part of human nature, then Christian thought and experience betray reality. Christian thought and experience teach that the body is part of human nature and significant to it. Theologians today have devoted much time and reflection to the notion of embodiment. Connected to this reflection, a dialectical tension has arisen between Christian materialists and Christian dualists in the contemporary literature. On the one hand, Christian materialists have rightly highlighted the importance of embodiment, especially in the context of the doctrine of the resurrection. Christian dualists, on the other hand, have highlighted the importance of a persisting soul as substance that metaphysically accounts for personhood. The problem for Christian materialists is their inability to account metaphysically for a persistent self, while the challenge for Christian dualists is their inability to account for the human body as a contingent part of the person (or human nature) without denigrating or undervaluing the body. The difficulty for the defender of strong dualism is that s/he does not affirm a robust notion of embodiment supported by one’s experience and the Christian tradition.1 Defenders of substance dualism need to find a via media between strong dualism and views that include the virtues of materialism, given embodiment. I argue that all the defenders of the various Cartesian theories can tell a story consistent with both the Christian tradition and experience, but that CSD and EC provide the defender with some additional resources to tell a robust story concerning the soul-body relationship.2 The problem of soul-body union and by implication soul embodiment is a common challenge advanced against Cartesianism, as shown earlier. Having said this, there are a variety of ways for the Cartesian to provide a plausible story that undergirds soul-embodiment. Some solutions may be more satisfying than others, but in the end my desire is to lay out the options briefly and argue that Cartesianism is still a live option on the table for discussion.

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In this chapter, I explore the mind-body relationship and its implications in light of theological considerations on the body and the scientific considerations that come to bear on the body’s relation to the soul. It seems clear that both theological considerations and scientific considerations sustain the belief that bodies are important to human beings. While I suggest that there is no reason to suppose that it is inconsistent to hold pure varieties of dualism with both the theological and scientific data, I am more interested in supplying reasons for thinking that EC (as construed in Chapter 4) has the resources for a Cartesian defender to tell a more satisfying story of mind-body relations, assuming the view/model of the previous chapter shows the naturalness of soul-body union, and it seems to sustain the significance of the body without the need to take up ESDMO.3 The challenge, as mentioned above, for PSD is providing some explanatory data for the mind-body relationship. On PSD, it is clear that there is some sort of interactive relation between body and soul, but it is in no way obvious what that relation is. Having said this, it does not undermine whether or not PSD is true, nor does it bring about a contradiction when considering the soul’s interactions with a body. Yet, Hong Yu Wong rightly argues that an ‘intelligible’ explanation should be given (minimally, attempted) to this relationship between body and soul.4 Jaegwon Kim helpfully summarizes the problem or worry, If God united my mind and my body there must be a relationship R such that a mind stands in relation R to a body if and only if that mind and that body constitute a unitary person. In uniting my mind and my body, God related the two with R. Unless we know what R is, we do not know what God did. Again, we are not asking how God managed to establish R between a mind and a body – as far as we are concerned that can remain a mystery forever. We only want to know what God did.5 As we will see this problem is amplified when we consider both the theological data on the soul and body and the scientific data on the soul and body. My goal is merely to motivate the discussion by listing some reasons for intimating that EC (in terms of second-order properties; teleo-functions etc.) provides some natural and intuitive rationale or story for the theological and scientific data, thus it is more than merely consistent with the data (as with other varieties of substance dualism). My position, moreover, satisfies the naturalness criterion in a comprehensive Christian worldview or theological framework.6 Naturalness is a criterion where the scientist assesses the compatibility of parts and properties of differing organisms. I approach this topic by considering the essentials of Christian thought concerning the nature of human beings. I suggest that if a position on the theology of the origin of the soul is unable to account for these essential Christian tenets, then one has reason to reject that particular theory in favour of a more satisfying theory. Here, I consider the part – views on origins and models of anthropology – in light of the whole – Christian anthropology essentials. Moreland offers this

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criterion as a legitimate way for assessing theoretical parts in light of an overarching worldview. He defines the criterion in this way: ‘The types of entities embraced, along with the sorts of properties they possess and the relations they enter should be at home with other entities in the theory, and, in this sense, be natural for the theory.’7 The types of entities I consider here are souls, their properties, and their relations in light of Christian essentials from Christian Scripture and the Christian tradition on human personal ontology. Yet, all of these issues bear on the relationship between body and soul. Three doctrines play a role in drawing out the specific nature of the relationship between soul or person and body – the doctrines of creation, sin, and redemption. I draw on these doctrines to provide a more satisfying position in the contemporary discussion over theological anthropology. Practically speaking, a biblical or Christian view of human ontology requires the dismissal of attitudes that say ‘I will be ridding myself of the body so it does not matter what I eat or how I treat my body,’ and ‘we are bodies, so eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow you die.’ Having distinguished between the varieties of substance dualism and the position on origins in previous chapters, I now discuss these particular views as parts of an overarching worldview. In the present chapter and the forthcoming chapters, I lay out reasons for thinking that EC provides a more satisfying accounting for theological significance of the body, science, original sin, and personal eschatology. Part of the desiderata for a particular position on the origin of the soul in a Christian anthropology include the list below, which I address here: 1

2

An adequate accounting of the theological data (e.g. creation, incarnation, and resurrection) that explains the body-soul relationship and makes sense of embodied significance.8 The metaphysical relationship of body and soul upholds empirical considerations, which fits with the doctrine of creation.9

Initial theological reasons for affirming the value of the body to the person In a Christian anthropology, the body is significant to human nature for at least three reasons, which include data from creation, the incarnation, and the resurrection.10 I take each in turn and intimate a Cartesian option that naturally coheres with the data. First, reflection on the scriptural category of creation is necessary to understand a Christian view of the soul/body relationship. When one analyzes the narrative of Scripture, s/he will see that God made the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1), which might point to different kinds of reality. In the first section, I argued that one has cognitive access to the modal distinctions between body and soul, which interfaces with one’s reading of Scripture. The Genesis narrative has a richer description of reality than physical reality alone; however, many interpreters today might assume otherwise.

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I suggest that the Genesis narrative does describe reality given what I have shown thus far concerning one’s internal knowledge at the interface of Scripture. For example, the earth is physical in nature and when the author of the Genesis narrative describes God’s creation of the earth, he does so in a very physical manner. This description means, assuming physicality has these characteristics, that the physical world is spatial and has extension. Phrases like ‘God separated the waters’ and ‘God made the expanse of the heaven’ (Genesis 1:7, 8, emphasis mine) should clue the reader in to these notions of extension (a la Descartes), which is commonly attributed to physicality. The rest of the narrative uses physical and sensual language to describe God’s creation of the world. This is not to say that God did not create immaterial things as well, but the physicality of God’s creation is emphasized. At the end of the creation narrative in Chapter 1, God looks at his creation and characterizes it as ‘very good’ (v. 31). This characterization is very important in the contemporary discussion because it emphasizes what naturally reads as intrinsic goodness of the physical creation in response to particular worldviews that may have de-emphasized the value and significance of the physical world, including that of the physical body. Theologians often refer to Genesis as support for the physical creation over the immaterial world. Connected to this, critics retort that what we see in the creation narrative is fundamentally a material/physical creation not an immaterial creation, but this seems strained.11 By way of response, such a position is an inadequate solution to draw if the Scripture’s narration, concerning the phases of human existence, requires some sort of substance dualism concerning human nature, which it does – as I argued in Chapters 1 and 2. Furthermore, it is a strain to argue that substance dualism cannot affirm both the value of the body and soul. In fact, one is warranted in reading the authors of Scripture as affirming both assumptions if the person is essentially immaterial and is created as a person intimately attached to and functioning with a body. Arguably, Scripture accounts for both truths; hence, substance dualism is a more plausible position to hold. It is true that the body has value and that this truth is an essential Christian teaching, which coheres with the doctrine of creation found in the creation narrative. Affirming the physicality of creation in no way undermines the reality of the soul. Second, the doctrine of the incarnation is closely intertwined with the doctrine of creation, and it supports the value and significance of the body like that of creation.12 It is not a surprise that some theologians have grounded the value of the body in the incarnation given the physicality of the incarnation. In fact, Irenaeus, one of the great historical theologians, fought against the idea of Gnosticism precisely because he believed in the physicality of the incarnation. According to Irenaeus, anything undermining the belief that physicality is good is at odds with the doctrine of the incarnation.13 Susan A. Ross, when commenting on the Catholic tradition on the unity of body and soul, argues that the incarnation grounds the value of embodiment: ‘The sacramentality of the Catholic Christian tradition is based in the

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incarnation, which means that the materiality of human beings and of our world has an intrinsic sacredness.’14 She connects this line of thinking to the idea that for the incarnation to take place it implies that embodiment is valuable, important for a complete human being, and allows for functional wholeness.15 John 1 yields the idea that the Logos or second person of the Trinity comes to the earth and takes on human form, but this does not mean that the Logos merely took on a human soul – he also assumed a human body. In John 1:14 we find an explicit affirmation of the divine assuming a human body. It reads, ‘And the Word (Logos referring back to verse 1) became human flesh.’ This verse appears to teach that Christ became or assumed human nature, comprising body and soul. Chalcedon carefully delineates what we find in the Christian Scriptures. Those who formed the creed affirmed the truth that the Logos took on flesh, meaning that he assumed a human soul and body. In fact, substance dualists have the resources, motivated by a longstanding tradition, to affirm the contemporary emphasis of the doctrine of the incarnation supporting the value and significance of the human body because the soul begins embodied, lives the majority of its life embodied, and will live in the final state as an embodied being. The doctrine of the incarnation in Scripture describes the Logos as taking on ‘flesh’ so that humans may know God. With reference to the doctrine of salvation, the incarnation is the beginning of the Logos’ redemptive work for human nature, which culminates in a physical resurrection. Third, the doctrine of the physical resurrection is a Christian essential; it too informs a Christian’s understanding of human personal ontology. First Corinthians 15:12 is one text that points to the doctrine of the physical resurrection. When reading the passage, one naturally interprets the body as distinct from persons because of the modal distinctions between person and body (i.e. PBSD). Paul, in his discussion of the resurrection, grounds the resurrection of human persons in Christ’s resurrection: ‘But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?’ Isaiah 26:19 also reads, ‘But your dead will live, their bodies will rise. You, who dwell in the dust, wake up and shout for joy. Your dew is like the dew of the morning; the earth will give birth to her dead’ (emphasis added). The doctrine of the physical resurrection finds further support in Ecclesiastical tradition. One such example comes from the Apostle’s creed. The final line communicates the hope of the redemption: ‘The resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.’16 Thus, Scripture and Christian tradition support the notion that humans (i.e. as a soul that persists) assume bodies in their final state. By way of implication, human bodies are valuable according to Scripture. To deny this truth, one would need to make a case that there was not a physically resurrected body, but a spiritual resurrection. The Docetists taught the notion of spiritual resurrection, but the evidence against it is great. In fact, the church, as shown previously, affirmed the physicality of the resurrection in the end times. One would also need to explain away the testimonial evidence for the ‘seemingness’ of the physical resurrection as found in Scripture (e.g. see the Gospels and 1 Corinthians 15: 6, 7).

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Philosophically, one could do this by reducing the material stuff to an immaterial substance or eliminating the material body altogether, but again, Scripture, the majority of Christian thought, and church history contradicts this alternative tradition. As a result, it seems fair when contemporary authors criticize some variations of Christian Platonism if in fact some Christian Platonists denigrate the body and only highlight that Christian redemption is merely the redemption of the soul.17 However, Christian materialists today have been quick to emphasize the reality that Scripture does not highlight the immortality of the soul, but the resurrection of the body.18 According to many substance dualists, both emphases are found in Scripture. The immaterial part and the material part are not opposed to each other.19 Further, while Scripture may highlight the physical resurrection of the body, it does so on the condition of the soul already existing and the soul’s nature encountering a salvific change. Thus, it is not true that the Scriptures emphasize the physical resurrection of the body by excluding the soul. Connected to this, it is also true that in our final state, humans will not be floating as spirits in heaven, as some may suggest. Instead, we will be embodied beings on the new earth. The nature of human redemption is complete in that it incorporates both body and soul, not simply the soul or the body. Additionally, for a human to perfectly satisfy, honour, and live a glorious life, it requires an embodied human being, not simply a human soul; thus, one needs a view that is neither materialism nor a view that posits a soul without a body. While all the variations of substance dualism can account for a relationship between soul and body, EC has the resources to more naturally account for the soul-body relationship because of the soul’s second-order properties – thus it is a more satisfying theological position that coherently fits with the biblical narrative.20 In addition to the teachings of the Christian Scriptures and the tradition that both soul and body are upheld as valuable, the scientific data seem to support the notion that human beings are embodied souls, which undergirds the value of both person and body. Having said this, I suggest that EC has some resources to support a more natural relationship of soul and body than other dualisms. To this we turn.

Empirical data on the soul and body One ought to consider models of anthropology in light of the empirical and evolutionary data available. A broad worldview framework ought to cohere with the data. Furthermore, the empirical and evolutionary data21 are a part of divine creation and God’s relationship to the physical world. Marc Cortez states that we need to integrate the empirical/scientific data, when he says, We should develop our understanding of the human person in dialogue with contemporary science … . No theory can simply ignore these findings and operate in a theological or philosophical vacuum. Thus, all of the

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Creation and Cartesian souls theories attempt to engage and provide some perspective on recent developments in neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and the cognitive sciences, among others.22

Empirical data are important to human ontology insofar as humans are physical. There may be reasons for construing some empirical and evolutionary data along idealist or anti-realist lines, but I take empirical data to fit in an intuitive framework that is readily assumed by most and do not see why one should deny it outright. Experience, moreover, dictates that human beings are material or, at the very least, have material parts, so I proceed with this assumption in mind. I will show that all varieties of substance dualism are coherent with the data, yet the naturalness of the positions given the empirical data is a matter deserving further consideration. Human souls relate intimately to bodies and depend upon bodies in important ways. In this section, I briefly explore the place souls have in God’s economy of creation. I discuss briefly the view of origins in relation to physical evolution as a contemporary issue. Related to this discussion, Paul Churchland argues, The important point about the standard evolutionary story is that the human species and all of its features are the wholly physical outcome of a purely physical process … . If this is the correct account of our origins, then there seems neither need, nor room, to fit any non-physical substances or properties into our theoretical account of ourselves. We are creatures of matter. And we should learn to live with that fact.23 What is important about Churchland’s thought here is that a metaphysical story of human nature ought to include its somatic part, but it is simply question begging to assume that humans are merely somatic.24 If one is to affirm that persons bear a relation to other organisms in evolution, then this affirmation requires a metaphysical or substantial relationship between body and soul. To say that human beings are creatures of matter is sufficiently vague for it seems that substance dualists can even affirm this truth to varying degrees. It appears, however, that what Churchland is saying is that human beings come from physical matter and are thus composed of physical matter, which has some warrant. But, the claim and its merit are still debatable. If Churchland means by this that humans are solely material and their origination were purely from material mechanisms, then this would require a metaphysical argument not a scientific argument. On the surface, there is no reason to assume that just because our bodies are produced through physical processes that we too are produced that way. If, on the other hand, he is saying that humans merely have physical matter as a part that plays a role in our history, then this line of reasoning does nothing to undermine the truthfulness of substance dualism. Defenders of substance dualism could say that the physical part is simply part of the history of the soul.

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Yet, Churchland seems to press for the stronger claim but nothing in the quote above undermines or refutes substance dualism. Not that humans are evolved beings in the evolutionary process, nor that they are physical, nor that they are a biological species demonstrates that souls do not exist or that souls do not have substantial relation to their bodies. For Churchland to claim that the process of human origins is purely physical is a mere assertion and is neither obvious nor worthy of being taken seriously. However, the discussion of the precise relationship of body and soul and how the empirical evolutionary data sheds light on the nature of this relationship that emerges is significant. I now turn to the general relationship between a mental substance and the natural physical universe to provide some data for thinking about the coherence of substance dualism with evolution and the most natural metaphysical option. Some have referred to the notion of a mental substance in the natural physical universe as ‘queer’ and ‘mysterious.’ The reason for this claim is based on the supposed non-spatiality of mental substances that seem unlike the physical, yet the mental substance exists in a physical world that is spatial and contrary to the mental.25 Unsurprisingly, this common sentiment bears similarity to the ‘Ghost in the machine’ moniker given by Gilbert Ryle. According to Ryle, the notion that a man of a differing nature is in a machine is odd and unnecessary as the picture of a ghost in a machine suggests. Most believe that mental substances are just awkward in the world because the natural physical world is spatial and entities in the world have extension and occupy space. Thus, one must find a theory that is more natural and brings mind and physical matter closer, or at least this is a common sentiment. The charge of the soul’s being ‘awkward’ or ‘odd’ in the physical world only finds traction if one affirms naturalism. In effect, one would need to deny the existence of spirits, angels, and God outright while affirming physical nature and event causation as complete.26 If one does affirm metaphysical naturalism, then he or she must come to terms with the fact that the world is made up of minds that are really just physical in nature. The reality is that predicates of souls like first-person consciousness are irreducible to physicality in any sense of the term, as I argued earlier. If one assumes some sort of naturalism, then one will be confronted with the perplexity and oddness of minds. The dualist is not confronted with this challenge.27 However, this is simply to presuppose a metaphysical framework that excludes minds and bears the burden of a never-ending tension. Hasker, not a naturalist in any strong sense of the term, and others have developed a similar line of logic concerning the oddity of Cartesian souls in the natural world. This line of thought carries much more weight than the previous argument or objection from the oddity of Cartesian souls. Hasker finds the merits of materialism unsatisfactory but considers the tight relation between mind and body as rightly reflected among materialists. Hasker argues that philosophers and theologians ought to bring the mind closer to the natural physical universe in theory construction, which is something Hasker has attempted. In so doing, he has written a more detailed and persuasive analysis of the

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‘oddness’ confronting substance dualism, at least traditional variations of it, given the physical universe. Hasker asserts that the traditional dualist position is not consistent with the empirical data concerning physical organisms.28 By looking at the empirical and evolutionary considerations, one is able to see more clearly the metaphysical relationship of body and soul and its theological entailments. Both experience and scientific data seem to suggest that souls (i.e. minds) are to some degree functionally dependent on brains. The challenge for substance dualism is how to account for the data from mind on brain. Below, I consider the experiential and empirical data of the soul’s functional dependence on the brain, and suggest that each view has the resources to account for the data but some seem more natural. I contend that proponents of most varieties of traducianism and ESDMO have difficulty accounting for the soul’s persistence from somatic death to somatic resurrection, even if some variations can satisfactorily account for the empirical data. The problem for traditional-creationism is a grounding problem for the naturalness of the significance of the body. EC, on the other hand, naturally accounts for the notion of the body as a valuable entity in relation to the soul because of the soul’s second-order properties. In what follows, I argue that the present empirical data on mind-brain relations are consistent with traditional dualism but that traditional dualism appears unnatural given the present data. Additionally, I argue that EC satisfies a theological view of origins.

The criterion for satisfying empirical and evolutionary considerations In this section, my intent is to briefly lay out the criterion given by William Hasker and suggest reasons for thinking that EC satisfies the criterion.29 It seems clear from Hasker’s analysis that the following criterion is difficult to reconcile with SC or traditional-creation, but not necessarily impossible. I argue that EC can satisfyingly account for Hasker’s criterion.30 Fine-grained dependence of mind on brain Hasker raises the problem of the fine-grained dependence of mind on brain for traditional and creationist dualisms.31 Hasker argues that both experience and the empirical data suggest that souls are intimately dependent on brains. What is clear is that what often affects the brain also affects the soul. The argument is that substance dualism of a traditional and creationist sort is just unnatural because of the sharp distinction of the soul and brain. Although this charge to traditional/creationist dualisms is similar to the charge of being ‘odd’ or ‘awkward,’ it is more nuanced. The charge above asserts that the material part (body and brain) from evolution can explain everything about the person and the mind, and proceeds to suggest that minds are either unnecessary or odd. Furthermore, souls or minds are unnecessary and the scientist is able to eliminate the soul/ mind from his or her theory construction. Hasker does not see this conclusion as viable given the evidence, so his attempt is not to make such a strong claim.

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Hasker is after a much weaker claim that is sufficient for his purposes; he is after a natural or intuitive relation that obtains between the soul and the body on a traditional or creationist view, which he argues is not present – so far as we know. This notion of the mind-body relationship from fine-grained dependence provides the rationale for rejecting traditional/creationist dualisms in favour of what Hasker advances as a variation of emergent substance dualism. While Hasker affirms that this notion of fine-grained dependence does not conclusively rule out traditional/creationist dualisms, it does cast doubt on whether creationist-dualism (i.e. SC) is a satisfying accounting or coherently fits with the data. Hasker argues that there is empirical evidence in favour of the dependence of mind on brain. In the context of analyzing traditional dualism in ‘Souls Beastly and Human,’ Hasker says, ‘Another major difficulty concerns the pervasive and fine-grained dependence of mental phenomena on the state of the physical brain.’32 In similar fashion, Hasker analyzes Cartesian dualism33 in The Emergent Self: On the dualistic view, why should consciousness itself be interrupted by drugs, or a blow on the head, or the need for sleep? And why should reasoning, generally thought of as the distinctive activity of the conscious mind, be interrupted by such physical disturbances? The natural conclusion from Cartesian dualism would seem to be that consciousness should continue unabated during such times.34 This objection is not devastating for the traditional-creationist, but does confront dualisms that are more traditional with a difficulty of reconciling the empirical data with the philosophical belief in the fundamentally distinct natures of a soul in contrast to a body, and, more fundamentally, it questions the relationship between soul and body. While the traditional/creationist dualist may not have an intuitive account of soul-body interaction or the mind/soul on brain dependence, this is not a reason for denying that the two interact.35 If causal interaction is a reality, then it goes some way to explaining why the body/brain affects soul states.36 Yet, it does not seem to go far enough given the fine-grained nature of the soul on the body. As Hasker argues, it still would seem that the soul would continue functioning in some capacity even apart from the body or would have the power to act after a blow to the head. Prominent dualist Swinburne argues for the supposition that the soul depends on the brain, at least functionally, but it is unclear to what degree it is dependent, by saying: Some brain keeps some soul functioning; but, lacking a theory of how this happens, we do not know how much of that brain is needed for that soul (as opposed to some-soul-or-other) to continue to function, or whether (under conditions very different from those with which we are familiar) a given soul can function without the brain which originally made it

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Creation and Cartesian souls function, either with a totally new brain or without any material object to keep it functioning at all. Lacking a theory of what it is about the brain, which keeps a soul functioning, our ignorance about how and when the soul can function is profound.37

I suggest that while this is not a problem for SC or traditional dualisms, it does raise some difficulties from the naturalness of the soul-body relationship, if one desires to provide a coherent account for the empirical evidence. As I see it, Swinburne’s view is a more sophisticated traditional view of substance dualism that is also creationist. The problem with his view is that it just appears unnatural that souls would have such an intimate dependence yet be ontologically separate from their bodies. Swinburne’s discussion is helpful for showing that there is not a clear inconsistency with the belief in souls and the empirical data from the soul on brain dependence. Yet there does appear to be an unnatural connection, for which Swinburne’s response is to say that we just do not have enough knowledge about the precise nature of the soul in relationship to the body. This is a fair response, but it remains less than satisfying. Hasker’s solution is to provide an emergent relation between the soul and the soma such that it brings the natures closer together and requires an overlap between the two entities, which allows for an intimate dependence relation of soul on body. Hasker’s ESDMO is one solution to the soul on brain dependence, but I suggest that there is another satisfying alternative. EC affirms the dependence relation of soul on brain, yet does not affirm that the existence of the soul obtains solely from neurological processes. Having said this, EC provides a better response to the empirical data than more traditional dualisms in light of the fact that the soul is a kind-soul and comes to exist with the body. Souls, then, bear the property of design for a particular body and brain. Additionally, the soul begins as dependent on a sufficiently functioning neural structure.38 Thus, this is not the view that the soul has no overlapping properties with the body, but that the two are fashioned one for the other such that when the soul is embodied the operations of each part is integrated with the other part. This makes for a view that the soul and body are one unity likened to a compound structural unity, and generally function with complete and unified integrity. Animal and human similarities Hasker has raised another problem for traditional and creationist dualisms that he considers a reason for rejecting these views. This objection is a part of a cluster of related objections including the previous from evolution and the mind-on-brain dependence. Hasker states, This much at least seems reasonably clear: animals experience sensation and have desires; some of them have emotions and engage in at least rudimentary rational thought … the basic metaphysical account of the nature

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of conscious experience needs to be the same for humans and for non-human animals.39 The solution according to Hasker, then, is ESD with materialist origins, as I described previously, which establish a metaphysical relation between varieties of physical organisms. Emergent substance dualism accounts for the continuity of the higher-level animals and humans, as well as the differences. Hasker describes the emergent phenomena as ‘beautiful and surprising.’ The notion of an emergent consciousness and an individual substance is not an additional component of ‘vital energy,’ nor are these a divine creation of a human soul somehow ‘added to the body.’40 There are differing types of emergence: logical emergent, causal emergent, emergent laws, emergent causal powers, and emergent individuals. Hasker defines the emergent individual: ‘this mind – the conscious self – that thinks, and reasons, and feels emotions, and makes decisions … this is the central core of what we mean by a person.’41 Hasker claims that his variation of ESD is superior to other live options in the philosophy of mind in that it avoids the difficulties for materialism and traditional/creationist dualism. In addition to the above-mentioned benefit from mind on brain dependence, it provides a rationale for the link between animals and humans in evolution as a metaphysical reality regarding the processes of the physical universe is, potentially, a virtue of an emergent variation of substance dualism. While Hasker may have shown his view more naturally coheres with modern empirical data from evolution of brains and animals, it in no way serves as a defeater to traditional dualisms. In fact, defenders of traditional dualisms can affirm both the evolutionary data as it pertains to physical organisms and the data from animal and human similarity. It is true that each variety will interpret the data in a manner that is distinct from Hasker’s position, but that does not undermine traditional dualisms or suggest they are not true. Substance dualists of all stripes can affirm the similarity between the animal bodies and human bodies in evolution without difficulty. The question that is of difficulty and poses a problem concerning evolutionary data is determining the precise nature of the soul and its relationship to the body, yet humans may lack sufficient access to this relationship. Having said this, nothing found in the above will undermine or contradict traditional/creationist dualisms, but it may cast doubt on whether or not SC is true. The degree of doubt depends on a complex of factors that deserve further reflection. At most, these views seem to lack the ‘natural’ advantages as found in Hasker’s ESD or some position resembling it. I advance EC as another view that has similarities to Hasker’s ESD. I argue that it more naturally satisfies empirical and evolutionary concerns because of teleo-functional properties (i.e. second-order properties), thus providing theoretical support to the notion that the soul’s natural habitat and functioning is during embodiment. To this we turn. EC appears to cohere with contemporary creationist intuitions and is coherent with the close and intimate relationship between the soul’s origins and the

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body’s origins because of the relation of origins and property-nature emergence. Thus, it is natural to affirm the basic motivations found in the creationist tradition, in that the soul and body do not mix as a tertium quid and the soul requires direct Divine creation. EC is a viable option that has not received the attention it deserves in the debate over the origin of the soul, yet has something to offer concerning the fine-grained relationship between soul and body. On EC, it appears our souls and bodies have an overlap of properties (namely, teleo-functional) and are designed one for the other. In addition to the overlap of teleo-functional properties, it is natural to affirm that animal organisms are similar to human organisms, which provide natural support for the notion that these physical organisms provide a natural environment or habitat for consciousness. But, what can one make of the distinctions between EC and ESDMO, given that they are both variants of emergent substance dualism? One of the distinctions between emergent-creationism and Hasker’s ESD that I see is from the distinction of consciousness. I do not believe there is an exact identity relation between animal consciousness and human consciousness or the ground for it. In the quote above, Hasker has put it that, ‘the basic metaphysical account of the nature of conscious experience needs to be the same for humans and for non-human animals.’42 Hasker may be correct that the account is the same, which can be accounted for in terms of emergentism (i.e. where human souls emerge, in some sense, with or by the material part). However, the differences between animal consciousness and human consciousness seem vastly important in that a human has a strong first-person perspective (e.g. specifically having the ability to consciously affect one’s thoughts and actions through self-reflection), but all animals seem to lack this kind of consciousness.43 Humans and animals do not have the same interior lives, and what this amounts to in terms of origins seems significant. As such, humans may require a different metaphysical story of origins from animals, but this does not take away from the similarities of animal and human bodies, the similarities both kinds of bodies have to souls, and if, in fact, animals do have souls then the similarities between animal and human souls given a sufficient evolutionary relation on emergent varieties of substance dualism.44

EC, ESDMO, and empirical concerns It seems that EC is able to satisfy the empirical data from the soul’s functional dependence on a brain/body and the similarities between animal and human bodies because of the soul’s functional properties that become actual when the soul unites to the body. Additionally, it has virtues of its own. The virtues of EC include that it accounts for the intuitions from contemporary evolutionary concerns in addition to the intuitions from creationism, as explored in Chapter 4. 45 It could naturally account for the objections raised by contemporary thinkers in the following ways. First, it would seem to fit within a broadly evolutionary world.46 I do not see how EC would contradict evolutionary theory in general, assuming continuity

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of species or, even, common ancestry. Minimally, one could say there is continuity in material organisms. The virtue of creationism is the affirmation of the common sense assumption that material stuff and material processes do not have sufficient causal power to bring about the existence of individual persons. Hence there is a need for God’s direct causation of souls. EC satisfies both propositions. Second, EC accounts for the tight mind-brain connection because God uses the subvenient material base with respect to the new emergent thing.47 Bodies and souls instantiate an essential property of shared origins. Third, EC accounts for the similarities between higher-level animals and humans in virtue of the fact that there are distinct kinds of souls that relevantly correspond to the nature of the body in physical evolution. These souls are similar because they bear the property of design for particular kinds of bodies, evolutionarily. In contrast to other traditional creationist dualisms, EC affirms the consistency of the soul and empirical concerns, but it also accounts for a deep and intimate relation between the mind-body, approaching what Hasker captures with his ESDMO. It could be that higher-level animals have souls according to EC. A potential story consists of the following; God uses the pre-existing stuff in the evolutionary process for the emergence of animal-souls. An alternative story might consist of the soul’s supervenient relation upon the animal body similar to human souls. Additionally, there is a tight connection, conceivably, where emergent-creationism accounts for the continuity of material organisms in the evolutionary process. As this is an alternative from Hasker’s ESD the reader may wonder why it is a needed alternative. I believe there are two reasons motivating the need for EC as an alternative to ESDMO. By situating the soul as a direct creation of God, one can still maintain the notion that souls have a vertical relation to God where the soul has an intrinsic nature that is comparable with the Divine nature. This requires a metaphysical explanation that is directly rooted in Divine causality. This upholds the insight of SC. The significance of maintaining this position is that the soul might have greater ontological similarity to the Divine nature than that found in other physically mediated organisms. One might object that God’s creation could amount to a simple explanation that God divinely arbitrates this creation. However, it seems that according to a creationist, souls cannot originate directly from or through physical evolution alone. Souls in virtue of their nature and personhood transcend physical evolutionary causes. Therefore, it is not merely an issue of God arbitrarily deciding to create souls this way – it is a matter of necessity. According to the creationist, souls are created directly by God because souls necessarily require a transcendent causal explanation above what is natural.48 Additionally, the EC soul can capture the natural advantages of those found in Hasker’s ESDMO. By claiming, as Hasker does, that the human soul directly emerges from a sufficiently complex neural structure it seems that he gains nothing, in contrast to the EC assumption that the soul begins to function in virtue of its relation to a sufficiently complex brain. On EC, this situation is completely explainable in that a properly functioning brain affects the soul. The

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reason for this is that a human soul supervenes on, gains novel properties and powers, and begins to function with the body. When Hasker criticizes traditional and Cartesian varieties of substance dualism with examples like a knock on the head causing the cessation of the soul’s consciousness, he is criticizing more pure varieties of substance dualism that have no obvious or natural relation to the body. On the variety of Cartesianism I advance, the soul has an actual independence from the body and the possibility for existing and functioning disembodied, but not in a complete functional sense. On this view, the soul functions more naturally and powerfully with the body. Whereas in Hasker’s view he has claimed that it is not necessary or essential to the human soul that it could not exist disembodied, yet functionality is another issue. Said another way, it is not necessary and essential to the human soul that it always exist embodied – according to Hasker. While this may be so, the property of the human soul existing without the body does not follow naturally from Hasker’s explicit commitment to the body/brain causally producing the soul and causing its continuation. This is a subtle difference from EC, but an important difference. With respect to functionality during embodiment, both Hasker’s ESDMO and EC appear to be empirically the same. How they are when disembodied is another question, which I believe is an important difference allowing for a stronger possibility that the emergentcreationist soul is more likely to survive, persist, and function in contrast to Hasker’s ESD soul. EC seems to have benefits over Hasker’s ESDMO. I advance two lines of thought that are potentially benefits of emergent-creationism worthy of further development. First, EC can coherently fit with the underlying assumption throughout Christian tradition that God created, at minimum, one human soul. With Hasker’s ESDMO, this is not the case. God did not create any souls directly and immediately on Hasker’s ESDMO, which results in the potential theological problem of ESDMO falling outside the parameters of Christian tradition. This is so for creationism or traducianism because they have a sustained history within Ecclesiastical thought. On both views of the soul, God creates at least one soul directly, but this is not so on Hasker’s ESDMO.49 Second, one might think that creationism naturally situates the mystery of the soul as an immaterial part rather than physical mechanisms. If it is true that physical acts are distinct from non-physical acts or rational acts, then there may be reason to suppose that these are rooted in distinct metaphysical things that require distinct metaphysical origins. One might think that rational activity transcends physical activities that terminate in space and time. If this is the case, then there is reason to believe that these physical things that act in space and time could not give rise to a thing that can act rationally. The mystery then on emergent substance dualism with materialist origins is of a different kind from the mystery on creationism. Related to this, Hasker has proposed the notion that an emergent substance partially satisfies the explanatory gap in mind and brain interaction.50 I argue that Hasker’s variation of emergence does not offer an obvious benefit over

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emergent-creationism given the dependency relation of the soul on the body/ brain for functionality. Additionally, emergent-creationism avoids the messy problem of situating the soul in physical matter as the source of the soul coming into existence. It is perplexing to think of a conceivable way to explain how it is that an immaterial thing can come from a material thing given their contrary natures. It is not only that this is not conceivable, it is inconceivable. For one to say that conscious stuff or the stuff that gives rise to it is in physical matter, is contrary to the immediate deliverances of reason. For the defender of ESDMO to root this in Divine mystery is harder to believe than say that the soul is just created by God because of the contrary natures of physicality and immateriality. In a sense, it takes more faith to affirm ESDMO than other substance dualist positions because that which is so fundamentally different is causally producing the soul. This is at least one argument worth pursuing against ESDMO. With EC, the mystery (whatever that may be) is more directly rooted in Divine explanation. If one assumes ‘theism,’ then we have grounding for the mystery because theism has the resources to provide a transcendent causal explanation. I am not claiming that there exists no mystery in creationism of an emergent sort, but that the mystery is of a different kind from that found in ESDMO. Moving on from these reasons, there may be one downfall parasitic on EC. The only apparent downfall, from a contemporary perspective, that I see for EC is from a kind of absolute continuity of all species in the physical universe, thus it lacks the economic nature of ESDMO.51 Undergirding this notion of absolute continuity of all species is the view that the physical universe is autonomous once it is set in motion or causally activated by God. A proponent of EC sees God as interacting directly with the physical order and, arguably, with the evolutionary process. It is not that the physical order is self-sufficient and causally independent. God is a necessary and sufficient cause behind the souls coming into existence in the physical order of causes and effects. For those who see the physical order as autonomous and causally self-sufficient, this view might appear less than satisfying. On the other hand, those who see the physical universe as organically connected and see God as causally interacting with the physical universe may find such a view appealing. Additionally, those who see human persons as souls that are situated in the physical universe, causally dependent on brains in some sense for interacting in the natural world and directly dependent on God for the soul’s origin, might see EC as a viable and satisfying position that accounts for theological considerations as well as some of the contemporary concerns. The reader may ask at this point why not just affirm Swinburnian dualism, which seems like a more developed version of traditional/creationist dualism. While EC is motivated by a Swinburnian dualism, it is not clear that the two views are identical or that Swinburne would affirm such a view. On Swinburne’s view it is not clear at what point the soul comes to exist or begins to function. Swinburne supports the notion of an interactive relation between soul and body, on the basis of empirical data, without a clear reason that naturally or

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intuitively grounds this connection. With similar motivations to Hasker’s ESDMO, the defender of EC can affirm the natural or intuitive grounding in terms of origins. If in fact the soul just does come to exist and/or function mediated by the body it was designed for, then the ‘what’ question, raised earlier, seems to have a more satisfactory answer than creationist views where the relation appears to be purely ad-hoc and arbitrary.52 What I have shown here is the broader picture in terms of empirical considerations, and theological implications for anthropology. EC has much to offer in the discussion over the origin of souls. It seems to unite the benefits of ESDMO with the benefits from creationist views wherein it provides a natural basis for thinking that the soul is related to the body and the soul’s existence came to exist directly from God.53 Given the preceding discussion, it is clear that the EC soul naturally accounts for the empirical evidence concerning a fine-grained relationship between body and soul. Again, the claim is not to answer the ‘how’ question but the ‘what’ question. This story on EC as to how the body contributes and provides some of the necessary causal conditions for the soul provides an explanation for what it is that God does when he creates a soul that is necessarily embodied. If the objector were to require an answer to the ‘how’, then it seems that he would need to raise the very same question to Hasker’s version of ESD. However, Hasker does not provide an answer to the ‘how’ question he merely tries to provide a reasonable explanation for why one might think this rather than providing an ad-hoc explanation as is common with Cartesianism, or so it is argued. In the end, this goes some way in articulating a theological anthropology that supports a functionally integrated body-soul relationship. Another important theological matter concerning the naturalness of the body-soul relationship is evident in the historical debate surrounding the doctrine of original sin, to which I turn next.

Notes 1 By strong, I mean to refer to PSD. Such a problem is commonly raised in both the philosophical and the theological literature. See for example Joel B. Green, Body, Soul, and Human Life, pp. 34, 48, 53, 57. See also Gilbert Ryle’s classic philosophical criticism in The Concept of Mind, chap. 1. 2 The Nicene tradition highlights the embodied nature of humans both in the present via Christ as the incarnate one that, according to Chalcedon, assumes a ‘rational soul’ and a ‘body.’ Furthermore the Nicene Creed describes human afterlife as an embodied state when highlighting not the interim state but the physical resurrection of the body. 3 Once again, EC is, at least, as plausible, initially, as Hasker’s ESDMO because both provide a story or the defender has the resources to tell a story that provides some intuitive content for the mind-body union. 4 See Hong Yu Wong, ‘Cartesian Psychophysics,’ in Persons: Human and Divine, ed. by Peter van Inwagen and Dean Zimmerman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 171. 5 See Jaegwon Kim, ‘Lonely Souls: Causality and Substance Dualism,’ in Soul, Body and Survival, ed. by Kevin Corcoran (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), p. 35.

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6 This general approach has much in common with an Augustinian-Calvin-Reformed methodology as reflected in the writings of such contemporary thinkers as Plantinga, Mouw, and Cooper, among others. I have not seen these thinkers use a naturalness criterion as a standard for assessing parts, but it seems appropriate to me. 7 J.P. Moreland, Consciousness and the Existence of God: A theistic argument (New York: Routledge, 2008), p. 29. 8 The notion of holism fits well here regarding the body-soul relationship within the spirit of Augustine’s thought where persons are souls and bodies are parts of souls construed in terms of a property-nature. See Peter Burnell in Augustinian Persons (Minneapolis: Catholic University of America, 2005), p. 53. 9 I affirm common-sense realism with respect to the self and empirical matters. Thus, I seek to avoid the two horns of the dilemma between accepting materialist monism or idealist monism. These positions unify the data and offer a reductive explanation or a subvenient base for the alternative phenomena to a lower reality. I do not see a strong reason for affirming this, and believe that both physical reality and the reality of our mental lives are both common-sense assumptions. 10 A theistic metaphysics of creation, incarnation, and the resurrection is not an uncommon way among theological anthropologists to ground the value of the body (physicality more generally) or to sustain the fact of the body’s importance in Christian tradition. See Kevin Corcoran, Rethinking Human Nature: A Christian Materialist Alternative to the Soul (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2006), p. 119. 11 See Susan A. Ross, Anthropology Engaging Theology: Catholic Perspectives (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2012), p. 50. Here Ross criticizes Cartesian dualism for denigrating the body or at least in the historical dialectic having the tendency of downplaying the value of the body. I do not know how much merit this objection really has, but it is a common philosophical and theological objection to Cartesian dualism or any variation of substance dualism for that matter. Throughout, Ross highlights the physicality of God’s creation. Also see Nancey Murphy, ‘Historical, Scientific, and Religious Issues,’ in Warren S. Brown, Nancey Murphy and H. Newton Malony eds, Whatever Happened to the Soul? Scientific and Theological Portraits of Human Nature (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), p. 5. 12 If we were to begin with a Barthian (i.e. Karl Barth) Christological anthropology approach then one could make the argument that Christ, in both his incarnation and resurrection, not only reveals but justifies or warrants theological claims about human constitution. From here, the ‘incarnation’ not ‘creation’ would be the starting point, although creation may still have a place. One would need to look at the features of Christ’s life, then show how a particular ontology fits or coheres with the implications of Christ’s incarnate life. Marc Cortez discusses this topic in his Christological Anthropology In Historical Perspective (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016), see pp. 155–159. Herein, Cortez shows that based on the Logos’ incarnation, the body is ‘integral’ to human life, the inner life is significant, humans are responsible moral agents, and human persons (emphasis on personhood) are contingent yet continuous. As I have shown and will offer additional thoughts on later, Cartesianism, of a composite/compound sort especially, can accommodate or account for these features of Christ’s life. The body is integral for human flourishing and for human functioning in a significant way. Humans have a deep and ‘robust’ internal life, which accounts for the fact that human existence is not vague or rooted in fussy boundaries but persists as moral agents. Cortez’s understanding of contingency is less than fully clear. He argues that Barth, among other theologians, affirm that personhood is not intrinsic but contingent upon Christ. This latter feature is debatable and worth exploring in more detail in another context. 13 See Eric Osborn in Irenaeus of Lyons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). See Grant Robert M., Irenaeus and Gustav Wingren, Man and the Incarnation: A

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Creation and Cartesian souls Study in the Biblical Theology of Irenaeus trans. R. Mackenzie (Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1959). In fact, some responded to Irenaeus by attempting to defend a Docetic account of the incarnation and explaining away the physically resurrected body. Irenaeus is known for affirming the bodily nature of human beings from creation to glory. His view of personal eschatology strongly affirms the physical/materiality of human beings in contrast to other Christian Platonist positions where the soul is fundamental, even if it has a place for the body. Given this, Irenaeus is an important authority within the Christian tradition, one that placed a high importance on the body. Ross, Susan A. Anthropology Engaging Theology: Catholic Perspectives (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2012), p. 93. Ibid. pp. 93–94. This is also stated in the Nicene Creed: ‘I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.’ The Athanasian Creed says: ‘All men shall rise again with their bodies.’ See John H. Leith, ed., Creeds of the Churches: From the Bible to the Present, Third Edition, see pp. 28 and 704. Of course, what precisely it means in 1 Cor. 15 for the body to be a ‘spiritual body’ is ambiguous, but it is safe to say that Paul clearly has in mind some causal continuity between the earthly body pre-death and the spiritual or eschatological body at the resurrection. There appear to be several lines of evidence in favour of this view. First is that there was continuity between Jesus prior to somatic death and his somatic resurrected body. This resurrection is what our resurrection is predicated upon, so it seems to follow that the Christian’s will be the same. Second, in 1 Corinthians, Paul uses natural organic language concerning both bodies as the one giving rise to the other. This theme is further developed in Patristic and Medieval theology. See Caroline Bynum in The Resurrection of the Body for further information on this matter. One notable example is Joel B. Green, ‘‘Bodies – That is, Human Lives’: A ReExamination of Human Nature in the Bible,’ in Whatever Happened to the Soul? Scientific and Theological Portraits of Human Nature, p. 153. Green explicitly objects to the interpretive move of emphasizing the immortality of the soul by noting the anxiety one has at death because of human embodiment, and persons in Scripture have no first-hand knowledge of the afterlife; thus, their reasoning is speculative. There are numerous problems with Green’s interpretation of these passages because Paul gives explicit detailed accounts of what will happen upon somatic death. Furthermore, while the Hebrews may have had a fuzzy notion of the afterlife, they nonetheless had a notion of the afterlife whereby humans would persist upon somatic death in some sort of sub-par existence. Additionally, it is debatable whether the emphasis of Scripture is upon embodiment in the context of the scriptural teaching on redemption because the scriptural narrative emphasizes reformed and renewed minds that find completion in the physical resurrection. Consider Romans 12 where Paul discusses the renewing of the mind. Certainly Calvin emphasizes the renewed mind and the mind’s knowing God. According to the substance dualist, this is an immaterial activity. In Chapter 4, I argued that 1 Cor. 15 and 2 Cor. 5 should be read together, which tell one something about personal eschatology and presupposes a particular human ontology. Oscar Cullman, Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Body? (London: Epworth, 1958), p. 79. Cullman, in his careful study of the Scriptures, argues for a view of anthropology that is very nuanced and pushes for a holistic view that seems to be assumed throughout the scriptural narrative in contrast to the harsh distinctions found in ancient metaphysical dualisms. While his discussion is nuanced, he does not develop a particular anthropology that metaphysically accounts for the biblical teaching of disembodiment and holism during embodiment.

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21 The precise nature of evolution and the evolutionary theory one assumes is debatable. I aim simply to show that there is a level of coherence between all the views on origins and evolutionary thought. 22 Marc Cortez, Theological Anthropology A Guide for the Perplexed (New York: T&T Clark, 2010), p. 71. 23 Paul Churchland, Matter and Consciousness (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984), p. 21. 24 For further clarification of this objection see William Lycan in his honest article, ‘Giving Dualism its Due,’ in The Australasian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 87 no. 4 (2009), 551–563. Here he responds to the cluster-related issues when looking at substance dualism (particularly of a Cartesian sort) and evolutionary theory. Although he himself is a loyal materialist, he persuasively argues that the present objection really is not a problem for dualism. 25 I am simply pointing out the supposed ‘oddness’ of the soul in the physical world. Some say the soul is spatial, which would make the souls existence in the physical world less odd. I would not make this claim, but I would say that the soul is causally present. 26 Christian materialists have other reasons for affirming the metaphysics of human persons as material in nature. Christian materialists affirm the existence of angels and God as immaterial; yet do not affirm the immaterial nature of human persons. 27 Moreland has persuasively argued this point throughout his book, Consciousness and the Existence of God. If one affirms metaphysical naturalism and the autonomy of the physical sciences as explanatorily exhaustive on all matters, then one will be left with a psychological perplexity that is beyond explanation. Moreland makes this point clear in his chap. 7, ‘Philip Clayton and Pluralistic Emergentist Monism.’ 28 See Hasker in ‘Souls, Beastly, and Human,’ in The Soul Hypothesis: Investigations into the Existence of the Soul, ed. by Mark C. Baker and Stewart Goetz (New York: Continuum Books, 2011). 29 In several places, Hasker persuasively argues that his emergent variety of substance dualism satisfies the data. 30 See Hasker, The Emergent Self. 31 William Hasker, ‘Souls Beastly and Human;’ William Hasker, The Emergent Self (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999). 32 William Hasker, ‘Souls Beastly and Human,’ p. 210. 33 Cartesian dualism is often construed as a form of traditional dualism. When Hasker is critiquing traditional conceptions of souls, Cartesian souls are at least one version he is referring to. 34 William Hasker, The Emergent Self, p. 154. 35 I discuss this issue, in some detail, in Chapter 3. 36 The ‘how’ is a different question. 37 Richard Swinburne, The Evolution of the Soul, p. 196. It is interesting that some implications similar to Hasker’s apply to Swinburne’s view. Swinburne holds that the brain causally brings about consciousness. What he says here does not fit neatly with what he says on the relationship between mind and brain. Swinburne has some similarities then with Hasker’s emergent dualism. 38 Alternatively, it may be that the soul’s existence is mediated via the body it was designed to depend upon. Thus, the story is such that God created the world including souls directly, yet mediated through the body. 39 See Hasker, ‘Souls Beastly and Human,’ p. 211. 40 Ibid. p. 213. 41 Ibid. p. 214. I point the reader to Hasker’s discussion on this. Also see Hasker in The Emergent Self, chap. 7. Also see J.P. Moreland, Consciousness and the Existence of God: A theistic argument (New York: Routledge, 2008), p. 21. 42 See Hasker, ‘Souls Beastly and Human,’ p. 211. 43 I am not sure what to make of the kind and degree distinction. Some would say there is simply a degreed difference between animals and humans, but in terms of souls the

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Creation and Cartesian souls gap seems too wide for the difference to be degreed alone. It is difficult to conceive of animals after a time of evolution gaining a strong first-person perspective. Humans have deep interior lives. Humans are capable of self-reflection and the ability to change their thoughts and beliefs over a period of time. It seems that animals do not share in the ability to have control over their internal life; instead their interior life is to a large extent dictated by other environmental factors. For a useful treatment of the differences between general consciousness and first-person or self-consciousness see Lynne Rudder Baker, ‘The Difference that Self-Consciousness Makes,’ in On Human Persons, ed. by Klaus Petrus (Frankfurt: Ontos and Verlag, 2003), chap. 2. As stated above, I am using intuition as a term that represents beliefs that are immediate in one’s experience. This is not a term representing a ‘mother’s intuition.’ This would require taking an evolutionary view in a broader sense than strictly restricting the events of the world to physical cause and effect. If one takes this line, then this will a priori necessarily rule out what I am arguing for here, it seems. How much of the subvenient base He uses is debatable. This is worth exploring further by considering theological and philosophical resources in addition to emergentism and the neurosciences. Alternatively, directly created yet mediated via the body. This is not to say that evolutionary theory is not compatible with Christian thought, but that a view that rules out the direct creation of souls seems in tension with the Christian tradition. This is simply a noteworthy concern that should raise some doubt in the reader’s mind about the prospects of Hasker’s ESDMO. Hasker, The Emergent Self, p. 192. Notice that I did not claim that it has the scientific virtue known as simplicity. I do not hold this because I am not convinced that it satisfies the entire criterion available. It does not naturally satisfy the possibility of disembodiment, as argued above. While I did not offer the evidence here, I do think disembodiment is supported by empirical evidence – out of body experiences and near-death experiences. Again, this is not a claim that this is incoherent or untrue. There is a difference between Hasker’s ESD and emergent-creationism. Hasker’s view makes a stronger claim that the soul exists from the neural-part, as the neuralpart is the causal initiator for the soul’s existence. On emergent-creationism, the soul is designed to exist with a brain and comes to exist not from the brain, yet mediated by the brain and functionally supervenient on the brain. What is important and shared in both views concerning the naturalness of the brain-soul unity and interaction is the idea that the soul and brain share an overlap of properties. It does not seem that the stronger claim of the soul’s emergent existence caused by neurology is required to provide a metaphysical ground for the naturalness of soul-brain unity and interaction.

Part III

Cartesian souls, hamartiology, and soteriology

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6

A Cartesian exploration of the soul’s origin, original sin, and Christology

Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned, (Romans 5:12, NIV)

By way of transition from the previous chapters on the models of origin and embodiment, I engage the metaphysical relationship of body and soul with hamartiology (i.e. the doctrine of sin). I show that each view allows for a coherent understanding of sin’s transmission. In connection with the previous section, I look at these parts to see which view of substance dualism most naturally fits in Christian theology. In the end, I argue that all the views on the origin of the soul have a way to account for the data, yet EC holds out some significant promise as the most natural and superior accounting of the data. With the four origin models carefully established, I turn to a brief explanation of each in relation to the transmission of original sin.1 It is important to note the significance of original sin within the story of Christian theology. As we see in Romans 5, the notion of both sin and death occur in some sense because of the human relationship to Adam (the first human representative; the first of the aboriginal pair). Having said this, the precise relationship we bear to Adam (or the first aboriginal pair) is ambiguous and, as such, deserving of additional reflection and clarification. Apart from the common rejection of Pelagianism or Semi-Pelagianism (the notion that our relationship to Adam is merely one of imitation and his sin has no relation to the rest of humanity), the meaning of ‘original sin’ is quite open as well as the notion of its transmission. One might construe ‘original sin’ as genetically received as corrupt dispositions, as a corrupt condition, or as guilt for Adam’s primal (i.e. first) sin.2 It is important to note that some sort of genetic or hereditary relationship to Adam, the first pair, or some aboriginal humanity is often highlighted as important within the Christian tradition, broadly speaking, but especially so in Reformed Christianity.3 While no creedal statement exists delineating what one ought to believe, there are some options that are live for additional constructive attention. My attempt in this chapter is modest. I wish to show that Cartesianism via the soul’s origin has some resources to make sense of the transmission problem. One reason one might think that

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Cartesianism is no longer a viable candidate is based on the problem of the Cartesian soul’s seeming disconnect from the body and its generative relation to previous bodies or the progenitor’s souls. However, I argue that there are some ways to make sense of Cartesianism and the transmission of original sin.

Origins, evil, and the problem of transmitting original sin4 Now, recall that, minimally, the doctrine of original sin asserts that humanity shares some sort of solidarity or unity, and that all humans in relation to other humans bear corruption and will, probably, sin. Maximally, original sin means that all humans share not only in corruption, but also in original guilt (often defined as Augustinian Realism). The challenge here is to provide an account for the transference relation between Adam (as a placeholder not necessarily a historical Adam). Sin entered the world through Adam, and other individualized souls which come to bear original sin do so in such a way as to bring about the additional problem concerning the precise nature of the relation between body and soul, and how souls, bodies, or souls and bodies relate to Adam.5

Traditional-traducianism Defenders of traducianism have traditionally charged the creationist with an inability to respond to the problem of divinely created souls, which bear the property of original sin. Once again, traducianism is the view that souls are generated successively (i.e. diachronically not synchronically) and this generation establishes a fine-grained relationship between souls. The strength of traducianism is that it provides the theologian with an account of the transmission relation. The problem that traducianists advance against creationism is that on such a view God creates souls directly and immediately yet these souls bear the property of original sin. They argue that the direct creation of each individual soul presents a problem for the creationist because there is no clear metaphysical relation that individual souls bear to Adam (i.e. original sin’s relation to the primal sin). On the other hand, traducianism has resources for a clear and definite answer that averts charging God with the responsibility of creating the soul sinful. The traducianist proposes that the human soul bears the property of original sin without invoking God as the direct cause and explanation for sin. Most often they affirm one of two different kinds of souls in their rejection of the soul’s simplicity, something commonly attributed to creationists. As such, metaphysical simplicity is the view whereby souls are non-composed, non-complex, and not reducible to a complex of parts. Traducianists affirm either that the soul is fissile or parturient, both of which, I suggest, are liabilities to the traducianist. Fissile traducianists affirm the notion that souls split off and comprise new souls. For example, Adam’s soul splits off and produces a new soul. Afterward, another soul may split off and produce or comprise another new and separate soul. This occurs not in synchronic fashion, but diachronic fashion, such that,

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when a soul splits off a new and distinct soul emerges from the previous soul. From this view, it is clear how the original soul can avoid instantiating the property of original sin. Adam, in this way of thinking, generates a chain reaction of corrupting other souls based on his free choice. On the traducianist story of origins, God creates one soul, namely Adam’s soul, and from the one soul, other souls come to exist according to a generative relation to Adam’s soul. Thus, God creates the original soul, as a good soul without its instantiation of original sin, and after the Fall each successive soul inherits original sin from the initial sin of the original soul. The parturient variation is similar in that souls produce soul parts or stuff that collude and a new soul emerges from the previously successive souls. Now, despite these dissenting comments, the virtue of traducianism, either fissile or parturient, is that it provides a solution that coherently allows for the generation of sinful souls and Augustinian realism. Augustinian realism is the notion that all souls exist in one metaphysical substance, namely the Adamic-soul as substance. On this view, a natural and generative mechanism unites all individualized souls to the originally created Adamic-soul. The Adamic-soul bears a generative relation to all other human souls. In this way, it is justifiable to predicate original sin (or guilt, as it is sometimes argued) to individualized souls in virtue of their relationship to the Adamic whole for which they become parts.6 Shedd, in his own creative construction, worked this Augustinian notion out in terms of traducianism. In this way, Crisp explains that Shedd constructively developed a view that is consistent with Augustinian realism that is explicable in terms of a generative relation. Some have raised a problem for the traducianist concerning human nature and its solution to the doctrine of original sin Prima-facie, the problem for the traducianist is being able to affirm a sufficiently dualistic view of human persons without slipping into what one might construe as non-reductive physicalism or property dualism, which says that there is only one substance, namely, a physical or material substance (i.e. property-bearer) with what one might call higherorder properties of mind (some of which are just simply properties of a material thing and others of which are novel emergent properties of the same substance). What is motivating this objection is the notion that there must be a soul that is a substance, something that is able to freely make choices, think in a manner that is analogous to God’s own substance, and possess self-conscious thoughts. In Peter Burnell’s exposition of Augustine, he makes note of precisely this sort of problem that Augustine raises for the proponent of traducianism.7 What may perhaps be a bigger problem for the traducianist is the mysterious nature of how the soul generates another soul and yet remains metaphysically distinct from physicality and physically generating mechanisms. Souls and immaterial entities do not seem to have physical parts, but the language of the traducianist is likened to a physical mechanism giving off parts (alternatively, fissile souls) and fusing with new parts. In the end, this may prove to be an underwhelming worry, but it deserves additional attention. Now, unlike traditional-traducianism, traditional-creationism or SC seems to encounter a problem with the transmission of original sin because there is no

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obvious or natural sense in which souls, the originators of sin, are tied one to the other. As such, the traducianist is right to push the objection for the grounding of original sin on a creationist view. Let us now consider traditional variations of creationism.

Traditional-creationism (SC) Traditional-creationism or SC (i.e. simple creationism) is distinct from traducianism. SC says that God creates souls directly and immediately and that he provides the metaphysical grounding for the relationship between the body and soul. This view is unique in that it satisfies the creationist-intuition that souls are distinct from bodies resulting in the soul having a sufficiently distinct essence from physicality. However, this seems to yield a challenge. There is difficulty for conceiving the unity and interaction of the soul and the corresponding physical part(s). The soul in this view is unique in that its nature is distinct from the brain. Consequently, the virtue of this view seems to entail a vice concerning the soul’s relationship to original sin. Given this, the defender of SC has no obvious or intuitively available solution to the problem concerning original sin and transmission. Creationists seem to have a problem offering a sufficiently robust enough relation for the soul and brain/body. It is not enough to simply assert the intimately integrated unity of brain/body and soul, but it requires a robust relation that unites the two as one. The problem for the traditional-creationist is not only that God would seem to create souls corrupt, but that souls would not seem to bear a sufficient relation to Adam to account for the transference of corruption or sin.8 If God were to hold individual souls liable for the sins of Adam, sins they did not commit and could not control,9 then God would be unjust because there is no coherent explanation for individual culpability. For this reason, we suggest that the creationist can give us only a partially satisfying answer to this problem in terms of the nature of the relationship between body and soul. Let us now consider SC along the lines of PSD. If one affirms PSD, then it appears the problem from original sin is unsolvable for SC unless one affirms a weaker view of original sin. Pure substance dualism is the view that human persons are souls that happen to be attached to bodies or, even weaker, causally interactive with bodies. On this view, it cannot be that the soul bears the property of original sin in virtue of creation. If created souls do not bear the property of original sin, then how does the soul come to bear the property of original sin at all? What the proponent of this view would have to say is that the soul inherits original sin in light of a body that is generated all the way back to Adam’s body. In this way, one can tell a story whereby the soul is an inheritor of original sin via the body, but this would be a derivative property. It could make some sense of original corruption, yet not original sin where actual sin is transmitted. Even if the proponent of SC defends the view on this basis, SC with PSD can only affirm original corruption in the sense of a soul inhabiting a body and living in the environment of sin.10 The reason for this should

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be quite clear. On SC with PSD, the person is essentially and strictly a soul, not a soul plus a body. Therefore, the person is not literally a bearer of original sin but lives and functions in the environment of sin because the body is the bearer of corruption.11 The defender of SC may have another way out of this problem by affirming a variation of CSD if compound variations are compatible with SC. Now, the proponent of SC with CSD may have the resources to rebut the objection by affirming that the soul-part inherits original sin in virtue of the body-part as a derivative property. On this view, the human person is a compound of both body and soul (i.e. construed along the lines of property-nature emergence). If the human person is a compound of body and soul, then one might think that God creates the soul-part and attaches it to a body-part. The body completes the human person and is literally a part of an individualized human nature. If this is true, then the soul can be the bearer of original sin in light of embodiment, but this would require one to construe original sin more loosely as original corruption not original guilt. In this case, the soul would be a Divine creation that is logically, though not temporally, prior to embodiment, so that the human person in virtue of the body inherits original sin. Additionally, this provides us with a stronger view of original sin than the person’s situational grounding in the environment of sin. It actually provides the ground for saying that the person, minimally, has sinful dispositions via the body. It is stronger than the previous view that is likened to a saint stumbling into an environment of debauchery. On this story, the saint is in the corrupted environment, but this does not entail that the saint him/herself is, in fact, corrupt. For this reason, the overall difficulty for SC seems fairly significant. It is difficult to see how the defender of SC can affirm a natural relationship between the body and soul that would allow for the person as a soul-substance to inherit original sin via the body. The advantage of the simple creationist view that the soul and the body have sufficiently distinct natures such that the two do not overlap or mix, also carries with it a problem. The problem is that the soul and body relationship seems to amount to a Divine arbitration. Therefore, the problem of grounding the relationship between the body and soul in a natural or intimate manner that allows for a naturally coherent story for passing on corruption seems unlikely. If this is the case, then the traditional-creationist can justifiably affirm a weak form of original sin – namely the person existing in a corrupt environment, which would seem to amount to Pelagianism. Alternatively, soul-body compound views can account for a more intimate union of body and soul, having the resources to show that souls inherit original corruption (not original guilt) as corrupt dispositions derived from the body. However, it seems that when Christians speak of original sin they are communicating a reality that is stronger than persons existing in a corrupt environment. In fact, we want to say that, minimally, persons are originally corrupted, not merely that they exist in a corrupt environment. The next two views do not encounter the problem facing SC because of the strong notion of emergence and, by extension, an emergent relation between the body and soul and human nature more generally.

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ESDMO While ESDMO in conjunction with the doctrine of original sin remains undeveloped, it can be spelled out in a similar manner to the traducianist view of the soul’s origin, in that it posits that a human soul is generated from a body or alongside a body that is metaphysically related to other human organisms. The difference here is the specific generative relation to which I turn next. In ESDMO, the physical/neural part generates the soul at a level of suitable complexity in contrast to souls generating other souls directly. In this anthropology, God creates physical matter with the appropriate mechanisms for individuation and, more specifically, conscious individuation. Thus, upon an individual human person appearing for the first time, say Adam, the Fall occurred shortly thereafter which brought about a chain reaction whereby all souls proceeding the first soul (i.e. the primal sin) were successively generated from the first soul, the first pair, or from aboriginal humanity mediately through biological processes. ESDMO posits a relation between soul and body such that souls are related to other souls mediated by their material parts. At most, then, it seems that the defender of ESDMO could naturally affirm original corruption and a robust understanding of the soul’s corrupt dispositions as they are integrally tied to the generating body (i.e. the disposition of the soul or the faculties are effects of corruption that could be directly generated from previous bodies biologically, and, given, the close relation between the soul and the body one could see how the dispositions and functioning of the body would effect the soul given the fine-grained dependence relation) given the causal conditions that give rise to souls, yet there seems to be a ‘gappy’ problem (i.e. there is not a fine-grained relationship between successive generation of the previous soul with a latter soul) between the transmission of sin from parental-souls to the offspring-souls because souls do not directly generate other souls as with traducianism, articulated above. At most, the defender of ESDMO could affirm a fairly robust notion of original corruption where souls inherit a condition of corruption with malfunctioning dispositions as a result of the intimate relation between mind and brain.

Emergent creationism According to EC, God creates the human soul directly, yet the soul’s coming into existence is mediated in some sense because souls, while substantial, function and normally exist in a larger dynamic and functional framework of inputs and outputs. In this sense, EC is distinct from SC. On EC, the soul has a natural connection to the body in terms of the soul coming into existence with the body and its mediation via a properly functioning body.12 The body may mediate the soul in terms of existence or may mediate the soul’s functioning, but, in this view, the soul does not come into existence isolated from its so-called physicalpart. In any event, the soul may share specified properties with the body or the soul may depend on the brain to actualize specified properties, yet the body

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does not instantiate those properties itself. The two are, in one sense, designed one for the other and function as an integrally related dynamic compound. One version of EC would say that God creates the whole human race as one act whereby individualized human souls become discrete effects of the one act. Accordingly, the soul bears an important relation or property that unites it to all humanity in virtue of the emergent relationship that exists among souls, bodies, and their progenitors. This view has the immediate benefits found in SC without the problems because it has a unity-relation with the concrete physical part. Following from this, the emergent soul has the unity and uniqueness of SC, arguably, in terms of the soul’s metaphysical simplicity or indivisibility. The defender of EC can avoid the challenges of affirming a fissile or parturient soul (i.e. traducianism). Additionally, EC bears the benefit of ESDMO where souls have a naturally intuitive relationship to bodies, but it averts the ‘gappy’ relation between generated souls and their progenitors. For this reason, the soul’s relationship to the body concerning origins allows the proponent to confidently affirm that there is a natural relationship between the soul and body such that the body really is a part of human nature, albeit contingently, something that proponents of SC struggle to defend. On SC, it is difficult to ascertain what it is that ties this soul to this body, but on EC there is a natural explanation or story that suggests this soul is tied to this body via Divine design and the manner in which the soul bears an essentially originative relation to the particular body. If one were to tell a story that affirmed the notion that humans are 4D objects (e.g. as space-time worms or stage theory), then one additional benefit with EC seems to follow. Assuming the story above of God’s direct creation of a concrete whole with discrete effects, one could argue that the human is one concrete whole and each discrete effect is a individualized effect (e.g. as a timeslice or as a stage) that is identical to the whole. On EC, one has the resources to tell a story about the transmission of sin. Technically speaking there no longer is a transmission problem because souls share their nature with other humans all the way back to Adam. It appears that EC provides a mechanism for allowing individualized souls to bear a property that unites them to Adam’s soul based on the connection between bodies construed as parts of one holistic compound of body and soul. As stated above, the soul and body bear a functional relationship such that the two function naturally together as an integrated whole. In this way, the property of original sin is assumed not passed biologically or spiritually but by a compound that is teleologically and functionally one unit. For this reason, one can affirm a natural transfer relation between souls that are united to Adam and his initial act of sin (i.e. the primal sin). Additionally, we might say that God creates all the souls at once that are related to one metaphysical whole that come into existence at discrete phases of time, but this would require additional metaphysical work to construe the nature of concrete wholes and individual instantiations of the parts in relation to time.13 What I have briefly shown here concerning EC is one way in which it provides resources for a satisfying account of the transmission of original sin from soul

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to soul via the connection each has to the other as an effect of one divine cause in creation, or, alternatively, it circumvents the problem of transmission altogether. Yet, the individual appropriations of sin or corruption are derived in terms of the unity relation that each shares in its generative relationship (that is unlike both ESDMO and traditional-traducianism). Even if one were to shy away from telling a story that included Augustinian realism, a story could be told that allowed for the direct transmission of original sin (construed in terms of corruption) because of the intimate relationship of souls to bodies and souls to other souls connected through one long interconnected biological chain. This is unlike SC where souls have no obvious relationship to the body or the generation of the body successively linked together. Additionally, it is distinct from ESDMO where once again we have no direct representation in church history. However, EC is a more finely grained variant of soul-creationism, which finds traction in church history. In the end, there are several variants of Cartesianism that offer viable resources to tell a coherent story concerning the transmission of original sin. It seems that all four views have at least some resources to provide a metaphysical explanation for the transmission of original sin, but the explanation may only account for a weaker notion of original sin (e.g. an originally corrupt environment or original corruption). Additionally, each view of origins carries certain liabilities. I argued that the first three options encounter some significant challenges. I also argued that EC might provide the theologian with a more satisfying solution based on the naturalness criterion, but this would depend on a variety of other doctrinal commitments, namely, his/her theological commitments (such as the strength of original sin). In the end, the aim of this chapter is to motivate additional theological and philosophical reflection on the soul’s origin, particularly within the Cartesian tradition, in relation to the transmission problem concerning original sin. Presently, very little discussion concentrates on the transmission problem in the contemporary literature. What I have done here is to establish the set of views on offer and I have advanced an initial exploration of origins in relation to the transmission of original sin.

Cartesian Christology and the divine-human union Before moving on to the next chapter, I wish to briefly discuss the solution to sin and the ground for salvation. By way of transition to the next chapter, I discuss the Cartesian soul’s relationship to Christological considerations. I do this as a way to link the present chapter to the next chapter and for the purposes of drawing up the present resources later in the monograph. In this final section, I argue that Cartesianism has the resources for developing an appropriate traditional Christology reflected in Chalcedon, thus providing the ground for thinking about the metaphysics of salvation. Chalcedon states that Christ is first the Divine Logos ‘consubstantial’ with God the Father, yet at the incarnation he assumes a ‘rational soul and body’ and becomes ‘consubstantial’ with humans.14 Toward that end, I argue that this Christology provides the

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foundation for redemption based in the divine and human union, hence a Christological soul or a Christological dimension of the soul. By way of preface, the present section is very modest in its aims. I seek to motivate a way of conceiving how it is that we can understand the possibility of divine and human union. Beyond this, I am not seeking a definitive conclusion to the question of Divine-human union nor am I addressing other important issues in the doctrine of salvation (e.g. the atonement, or the fundamental mechanism for transformation). A compound or composite variation of substance dualism has the resources to account for the doctrine of the incarnation and provide a framework for thinking about how it is that human persons experience glorification in union with Christ. If one were to affirm a three-part Christology whereby the Logos (i.e. second person of the Trinity) assumes both a body and a rational soul at the incarnation, then this would provide a coherent Christology (assuming one can avoid Nestorianism) and a foundation for understanding human unity with the divine.15 I suggest that one could affirm a view whereby the Logos assumes human nature (i.e. soul and body) as a contingent part of the Logos. Further, I take it that when the Logos assumes the human soul, it assumes it prior to the emergence of a separate human person. In this way, the individuality of the Logos provides the hypostasis for human nature (body and soul) such that the incarnate Christ is primarily a divine person who contingently assumes body and soul. In this way, one can articulate a coherent Christology that is Chalcedonian in nature. If one can conceive of the Logos taking on parts that comprise human nature, then it is not a stretch to conceive of him assuming other parts. The other parts he would assume would be the saints who are saved and being sanctified in their union with Christ. The union would be one of a compound structure something like a building that has multiple parts (e.g. a concrete foundation supporting steel beams, etc.) that comprise the whole. In a similar way, one could construe Christ’s body as the foundation and structure wherein Christ is able to assume other parts. In this way, human saints would participate in Christ’s divinity via his humanity without mitigating the substantive nature of human persons.16 How is it, then, that substances relate and participate in Christ? Previously, I explained that one type of soul has an internal structure and teleo-functions whereby first-order properties are functionally activated as second-order properties in relation to the somatic part. Given this understanding, it is possible to imagine that something similar occurs in terms of personal relationships. Thus, one can say that souls are relational and yet not fundamentally constituted by those relations. As such, given that souls are relational by nature, they require structural dynamic contexts for flourishing (i.e. compound structures). In another context, I have advanced that human souls are like lightbulbs that depend on structural contexts for personal flourishing. To this analogy, I now turn.17 One can think of the human soul’s relationship to other particulars in terms of a lightbulb. Lightbulbs serve to highlight the teleological and Christological

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aspects of a substantive view. Lightbulbs have several features and give rise to specified properties analogous to souls. A lightbulb exists as a substantial entity. Lightbulbs are the kinds of entities that function in a dynamic structure of energy transfer to the lightbulb. If one uses the example of an incandescent bulb that is electric, then an electric current passing through a filament wire produces light, and it is raised to a high temperature. It is true that lightbulbs have certain limitations and specified liabilities, yet the lightbulb holds some promise as an analogy for the soul’s union with Christ and unity within Christ’s body. First, both are substances existing with specified properties and powers. Second, both substances are goal-oriented. The purpose of the lightbulb is to shine light and the purpose of the human soul is to shine forth God’s light (i.e. a metaphor for glory). Third, both exist in a dynamic structure of inputs and outputs. Lightbulbs require an energy source, namely a socket. The energy source gives power to the lightbulb as it is connected via the socket and transferred through a wire. Analogously, human souls construed as souls with aptness for bodies depend, in some functional and phenomenological sense, on bodies and other persons through which they have appropriate mental and volitional functioning.18 Fourth, both lightbulbs and souls have greater potential in a larger compound structure. For example, lightbulbs that are united in an overall compound structure with other lightbulbs will give off greater light and heat. One might argue that bulbs have no light or heat without being placed in sockets, and this reality may be the weakness with the analogy. However, one could assume an analogous relationship in that the bulb has existence as a soul has existence. Similarly, yet much more complex, human souls have greater teleological capacities in a relational dynamic with other human souls. The situation with several lightbulbs giving off greater light is analogous to a communion of the saints where perfect unity occurs in Christ’s eschatological body in glory. Fifth, both the lightbulb and human souls have the potential for something greater than their standard properties. It is conceivable that lightbulbs could be re-structured for greater wattage. Likewise, human souls changed by the interior work of the Holy Spirit have potential for that which is beyond their ordinary capacities. As such, both the lightbulb and the human soul require and depend on an external cause for ‘greater wattage.’ In the end, one has some content for thinking more clearly about the beatific vision on the basis of an actual union between the divine and the human. This provides the metaphysical grounding for explaining what occurs in human transformation during the interim state of disembodied existence, which I explore in the next chapter. The defender of substance dualism can make metaphysical sense of Christology and human participation in the Divine without excluding substantial matters that plausibly undergird all aspects of theological anthropology from creation, to the fall, to redemption, and finally, to glory.

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Notes 1 The most comprehensive historical treatment is, N.P. Williams, The Ideas of the Fall and of Original Sin (London, UK: Longmans, Green and Co., 1927). For a helpful treatment on original sin from an analytic perspective, see Michael Rea, ‘The Metaphysics of Original Sin,’ in Persons: Human and Divine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). There has been some work on ‘original sin’ in the recent contemporary literature, but there is a small set of literature. 2 The Origen view is similar to the Gnostic story where humans fall from a state of vision of God into their material existence. Yet, Origen disagrees with Gnostics in that he does not see the material world as accidental to God’s creation and a mistake of his creation. Instead, it serves as a way to provide a way out of human corruption. When humans fall they fall to varying degrees, which correspond to the quality of their material state of existence. Through this test of material existence, Origen saw it as a vehicle for making one’s way back to God. Unlike Irenaeus who saw humans as physically embodied from their origins, Origen sees the material existence of humans as occurring simultaneously with or as an occasion of the Fall, yet Irenaeus saw the physical creation as necessary and essential to human existence. The original creation of humans is physical and serves as the context for human maturity. Athanasius in Against the Heathen considers the Fall into sin and corruption as something that occurs after the original creation of humans as physical unlike Origen. Athanasius held the ‘vision’ of God in an important place like Origen, a state in which humans fell out of as a result of the will. Athanasius also affirms that humans are created mutable, but that corruption is a distinct operation of the will to reject good. Others, like Aquinas, gave prominent place to the intellect in the Fall (see On Evil). The loss of the ‘vision’ is key, and one could interpret ‘original sin’ as a corrupt condition for which all of humankind falls – construed corporately rather than individually. This is one way to construe the transmission of sin, although it would not be so much transmission as a general condition that plagues humanity. Construed more individualistically, see Augustine (see City of God, book 14) and Calvin (see Institutes, book 2, chap. 1) who both affirm the notion of ‘original sin’ as genetically transmitted, although Calvin comes close to a affirming a kind of representationalism, but he is clear that ‘imitation’ is inadequate. There are, at least, two ways of understanding the genetic transmission. One is to see it as a genetic transmission of a privative nature (including both intellect and will) – which might be construed as ‘original corruption.’ The other way is to see the transmission as one of penalty, something we assume individually as parts of corporate humanity, which could account for ‘original guilt.’ For some helpful commentary on the readings listed above see Ian A. McFarland, Creation and Humanity: The Sources of Christian Theology, pp. 204–239. 3 Including the sources given above, see David Fergusson, Creation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), pp. 43–46. Also see N.P. Williams, The Ideas of the Fall and Original Sin (London: Longman, Green & Co., 1927). Both show the importance of a historical link for all evil back to Adam’s primal sin in Augustine and the Reformation. 4 In this chapter, I have drawn from a similar piece recently published; yet I have modified and adapted those bits to the present monograph. See Joshua R. Farris, ‘Originating Souls and Original Sin: An Initial Exploration of Dualism, Anthropology, and Sins Transmission’, Neue Zeitschrift fur Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie, vol. 58, no. 1 (2016). 5 I am not so much making a claim on Adam or assuming that he was a literal historical figure as we are assuming that humans exist in some sort of solidarity. It could have been that original sin was transferred from an original human population (where Adam is a metaphysical place-holder).

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6 See Peter Burnell, The Augustinian Person (Washington D.C.: Catholic University press of America, 2005), p. 35. Shedd offers a creative Augustinian construction, see: Oliver Crisp, An American Augustinian: Sin and Salvation in the Dogmatic Theology of William G.T. Shedd (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2007), chap. 1. 7 See Burnell, The Augustinian Person, p. 36. 8 Crisp carefully lays out this problem in his An American Augustinian, p. 17. 9 Ibid. 17. 10 The defender of traditional-creationism might opt for a stronger view of original sin by arguing that souls bear this property derivatively such that souls are originally corrupt and bear injustice of a previous sin, but reject original guilt. The only way one could affirm original guilt is mediately by way of ratification of Adam’s sin (e.g. Arminianism). 11 I do not believe the body can be the literal bearer of sin and guilt, but it can be corrupted. I say this because the locus of sin is predicable upon personal identity and a moral agent. Thus, if persons are strictly identified with souls or are essentially souls, then souls are the locus of sin (if a and b then c, a therefore c). 12 Souls come to exist with the physical-part and have first-order properties actualized in terms of the body. 13 It is debatable whether or not this would allow for a full-blown doctrine of original guilt where souls instantiate original guilt in relation to Adam. This is an interesting question deserving more reflection. See Oliver Crisp, ‘Original Sin and Atonement,’ in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Theology, ed. by Thomas P. Flint and Michael Rea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), chap. 19. 14 See Paul Halsall, ed., ‘Internet Medieval Sourcebook,’ in Online Reference Book for Medieval Studies (Fordham University Center for Medieval Studies, 1996), p. 451. 15 Something like this is developed by Brian Leftow, ‘A Timeless God Incarnate,’ in The Incarnation: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Incarnation of the Son of God, ed. by Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 273–99. If it turns out that a compound, concrete, threepart Christology yields Nestorianism, then I suggest that a broadly Cartesian abstract account of the incarnation can satisfy the union of human and divine. See JHW Chan, ‘A Cartesian Christology,’ in Ashgate Research Companion to Theological Anthropology, ed. by Joshua Farris and Charles Taliaferro (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2015). Chan offers a persuasive case for an abstract model. 16 Something that is common of many relational ontologies. 17 See Joshua Farris, ‘A Substantive (soul) model of the Imago dei: A Rich Property Soul view’, in Ashgate Research Companion to Theological Anthropology, ed. by Joshua Farris and Charles Taliaferro (Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2015). 18 See Richard Swinburne, The Evolution of the Soul (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 310–311.

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A Cartesian exploration of the interim state and the visio dei (A two-stage eschatological redemption and a two-part human)

God has something marvellous to give us – the beatific vision of himself in Heaven. (Richard Swinburne, Responsibility and Atonement, p. 199)

Unsurprisingly, many biblical theologians have argued for the ambiguous position that humans are psychosomatic unities while excluding the possibility substance dualism – especially Cartesianism.1 In fact, many in the same breath have excluded substance dualism based on the unwarranted interpretation of divisible parts.2 Cullmann argues that humans are basically material because of somatic resurrection.3 Finally, it is not uncommon today to read rejections of substance dualism as being Greek in origin and not biblical.4 Responses to these objections in favour of substance dualism are available.5 And, some biblical scholars support substance dualism or something akin to it.6 As I argue in A Cartesian Exploration, Cartesianism is a plausible theological option, and so it is also a plausible biblical option – or so I argue. Up to this stage, I have constructively explored the merits of the variants of Cartesianism or deviant variations of Cartesianism within personal ontology and the models of origins in the context of Christian dogmatics (e.g. creation, corruption, and salvation). I advance a plausible theological reading of 2 Corinthians 5, which presupposes Cartesianism. The context of the passage discusses soteriology (i.e. the doctrine of salvation), and presupposes that human persons metaphysically transcend the physical and epistemically transcend the physical world.7 Substantial dualism provides a holistic view, as I argue earlier, and a transcendent view of humans.8 By way of preface, in the present chapter I do not explicitly deal with the variations of Cartesianism or the models of the soul’s origin. Instead, I am interested more generally in offering a thoughtful biblical motivation for Cartesianism.

Re-casting the debate of salvation and glory as both this-worldly and other-worldly In the history of Christian thought that includes the contemporary literature, there has been a spectrum of views pertaining to metaphysics, ontology, and eschatology. If we were to give the reader a picture, we might see two contrasting views at two ends of the spectrum, namely, Platonism and materialism. I

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distinguish these two views merely for the purpose of facilitating discussion. Platonism denotes that which is immaterial such as souls, minds, ideas, eternal entities, internal aspects of knowing and the like. On the other end, materialism is often characterized by the dynamic, change, movement, spatiality, extension, sensual experience, and the like. Materialism currently reigns in theology and biblical studies. Naturally, this occurs at varying degrees and levels. However, it is clear that there is a common aversion toward anything resembling Platonism. Platonism, in all forms, signifies a degradation of all things material and bodily – so says the contemporary. The general sentiment suggested earlier is also reflected in semipopular level books stating that Platonism is devastating for Christianity.9 It is no surprise, then, that many cast the light of contempt over the hymn ‘I’ll Fly Away’ by Albert Brumbley. The hymn is plump full of Christian pictures of heaven as a Platonic realm where angels and humans float around from cloud to cloud. Nevertheless, it seems contemporaries have overstated their case. For it is arguable that Platonism had many positive effects on the development of Christian doctrine and practice.10 Ironically, while contemporaries scoff at any notion of Platonism because of its supposed ‘damaging’ effects on our understanding of physicality (e.g. embodiment and the physical world), they run the risk of highlighting physicality over spirituality.11 I would argue that the contempt for Platonism might be the context for why contemporary Christian scholars often fail to see the immaterial aspects laid out in Scripture. In the end, Christians affirm both immateriality and materiality. Matthew Levering, in the context of discussing the unhelpful effects of a materialist or physicalist worldview, notes the tendency in Joseph Ratzinger’s early thinking to ‘de-Platonize’ Christian thought. Later, when Joseph Ratzinger became Pope, Levering states, ‘biblical faith, in the Hellenistic period, encountered the best of Greek thought at a deep level, resulting in a mutual enrichment.’12 In the context of anthropology, both the soul and body are important. In fact, the Scriptures teach that the hope of the Christian is both spiritual presence with God and re-embodiment. Death, for the Christian believer, is a pointer to the immediate hope of seeing God in heaven and, later, embodiment at the physical resurrection. As Christians, we can say in good conscience with Albus Dumbledore: ‘To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.’13 To avert the common malaise of contemporary scholarship, I suggest that we attend more closely to our internal knowledge or our unmediated experience of self, the Christian tradition, and to the Scriptures themselves. One passage serves to demonstrate, in the context of eschatology and anthropology, that humans are both immaterial and material.

Corinthians 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 Persons as souls teleologically linked to bodies: considering personal eschatology as both spiritual and material In his thoughtful book, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting, Cooper argues that the natural inference from Scripture, especially as it pertains to the doctrine of the

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afterlife, is that human beings are composed of two substances/concrete particulars. Thus, the soul as substance accounts for the doctrine of the intermediate state between somatic death and somatic resurrection. The logic is something like the following: if Scripture and Christian tradition teaches or yields an intermediate state between somatic death and somatic resurrection, then some entity must persist during that state. Furthermore, to make sense of personal persistence beyond death it may require some kind of substantial persistence without going in and out of existence. A second conclusion Cooper develops is the idea that, while there are two substances, these function as one holistic unit. Although I agree with Cooper in his conclusions on persons and find his detailed research of Scripture on the afterlife extremely persuasive, I do not think he ventures far enough. In the present context, I am building on the foundation set by Cooper. I wish to argue in line with what is said above that PBSD fits better with a biblical anthropology than alternative philosophical anthropologies, including other variations of dualism that confuse the self with both body and soul.14 I wish to argue for two propositions. First, souls identify with persons as the metaphysical ground for the theological teaching of the intermediate state. Cooper has argued that many forms of substance dualism could cohere with the biblical data including Aristotelian hylomorphic dualism, Thomistic dualism, emergent dualism, and other versions.15 He does not argue for an exclusively pure dualism like that found in the Plato‑Augustine‑Descartes tradition, but he seems to vacillate over the notion of personhood and its relationship to the two substances.16 I have already made apparent the difficulties with COSD (composite versions of substance dualism), which are only exacerbated when considered in light of concrete examples in Scripture. Second, I argue that souls have an ens per se kind of existence in a strong sense, thus the soul naturally accounts for the existence of persons during the intermediate state between somatic death and the resurrection of the body.17 This is an argument for the most natural reading of Scripture.18 If this is in fact the most natural reading of Scripture on persons, then it seems that the recent move toward deriving physicalism from Scripture, and an outright dismissal of PBSD, is wholly unwarranted.19 The passages of Scripture mentioned below presuppose or yield PBSD. Naturally, the authorial intended propositions assume ‘I’ am my soul and ‘I’ have a potential kind of existence and can function disembodied, and thus I have the possibility of existing and functioning disembodied. Other forms of dualism must account for these passages in a contrived manner, and some are unable to account for the states of affairs found in these passages. In 2 Corinthians, we have more than one example supporting the disembodied existence of souls,20 with some intimation to the resurrection of the body. In 2 Corinthians 5, Paul addresses the immediacy of the Christian life after somatic death. Before looking at the specific verses, some general comments are in order. While many New Testament interpreters affirm Scripture’s teaching of the intermediate state between somatic death and somatic resurrection, they are less inclined to give this doctrine much significance. However,

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some interpreters see this interim period as part of God’s redemptive plan for humankind and suggest that the persisting soul is necessary for resurrection occurrence. Drawing from his commentary on 2 Corinthians, Aquinas makes a convincing case that the teaching of the intermediate state as central to the redemptive process, as embedded in Scripture, provides an important theological datum for how we understand persons in soteriology. Aquinas argues that in 2 Corinthians 5 the immediate hope of the believer (in this case Paul) is not the resurrection of the body but rather the immediate presence of the Lord. Therefore, in contrast to recent commentaries that suggest the hope of the believer is physical resurrection, the immediate hope of soul dis-embodiment has been unnecessarily minimized. The mechanism for our seeing God seems to be the soul’s separation from the corrupt body, according to Aquinas’s interpretation of ‘flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God’ in 1 Corinthians 15.21 This establishes a framework for understanding 2 Corinthians 3 and 4 that speak of the already/ not-yet, where we are progressively growing and coming to see God. This ‘vision’ of God is occurring now for the believer, but it will be fulfilled actually and objectively during the intermediate state (only fully experienced at somatic resurrection). Hence, we have an eschatological duality and a two-stage view of the afterlife, and the latter is part of how we make sense of the former. I suggest that 2 Corinthians 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 comprise for us the paradigmatic passages on Pauline eschatology. Clarifying scripture through personal ontology Some have suggested that dualism connotes opposition but this is speaking with the laity. Philosophically, substance dualism refers to the notion of two substances namely body and soul.22 Rather than affirm the notion of ‘opposition,’ as David E. Aune puts it, we can affirm the notion of unity concerning substance dualism – or some versions of it.23 Additionally, Pauline literature often speaks in more fluid and relational language and in soteriological categories without philosophical precision, but that is not to say that philosophical precision of Paul’s teachings, through the Church’s reception, is not attainable. I believe it is right of the Church Fathers and divines throughout Church history to reflect and constructively appropriate Scriptural teaching, all the while drawing from philosophical terms and categories.24 This we see commonly reflected among theologians reflecting on 2 Corinthians 5, which I suggest presupposes substance dualism and PBSD coherently accounts for it. Thus, I suggest that one can maintain some sort of contingent unity or the fact of the body being an accidental part of a human person’s substance (substance construed in terms of compound structures). The reason for this is clear that during the intermediate state the soul/inner part (i.e. ὁ ἔσω ἄνθρωπος) of the person persists between two differing stages of embodiment, hence we have the necessary and sufficient content for determining personhood. One might

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argue that this merely implies some sort of generic dualism not necessarily PBSD, but if it can be shown that the person persists positively in a state where the person exists and not merely a part of the person, then we ought to affirm a more robust substance dualism. I recommend PBSD, which I flesh out in terms of a beatific vision (i.e. spiritual vision) view of the intermediate state in what is to follow.25

Biblical-theological reading of 2 Corinthians and 1 Corinthians 15 First Corinthians 15 is a key passage on personal eschatology. Rightly it is read as yielding a doctrine of somatic resurrection. Based on a theological reading, many have read 1 Corinthians 15 as yielding the doctrine that humans are material beings (pace Cullman). I argue to the contrary that we are composed of two parts, which find support in another teaching of the wider catholic reception of the New Testament. With this in the background, I proceed to propose a modest theological reading of one other paradigmatic passage on personal eschatology. Cullman has famously posed the question, Immortality of the Soul or the Resurrection of the Body? I argue this disjunction is not an issue for PBSD, but both immortality and resurrection find support. Also, it seems that the Scriptures imply both.26 Scripture teaches not only that somatic resurrection will occur, but also the persistence of the soul in heaven as part of humanity’s purpose, namely the beatific vision. Once again, the two events are distinct but intimately related in the context of redemption and the afterlife. I argue for a canonical reading of 2 Corinthians 4 and 5, with 1 Corinthians 15 comprising a larger biblical-theology of personal eschatology. This is what I call the two-stage view of personal eschatology.27 Unfortunately, contemporary biblical scholarship has little to say on the matter of the first stage. In this way, I hope to provide a more thorough theological undergirding for the belief in Cartesianism, broadly construed, or PBSD as the view that makes sense of the biblical teaching on humans. In this context, I offer a more finely grained reading than simplistic explanations found on either side of the debate over the soul’s immortality or the physical resurrection of the body. In commenting on Wright’s recent work on the intermediate state, following Aquinas, I suggest a robust view of the intermediate state as a significant part of the two-stage view of personal eschatology where persons are able to ‘see’ God after somatic death. Wright and other contemporary biblical scholars miss or downplay the first stage.28 Aquinas argues for the immediate hope of the believer upon death that is later followed by and intimately related to somatic resurrection. Aquinas in one explicit passage sums up 2 Cor. 5:1–10 by saying, ‘Therefore, the answer is that the saints see the essence of God immediately after death and dwell in a heavenly mansion. Thus, therefore, it is plain that the reward which saints await is inestimable.’29 Notably, Hentschel has recently retrieved Aquinas’ teachings from the 2 Corinthians 5 commentary as a theological reading of the passage. After

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discussing Aquinas’ hermeneutical move from the medieval emphasis on the metaphorical to the literal, Hentschel proceeds to discuss the broad context by which he situates 2 Corinthians 5 linked to chapters 3 and 4.30 Hentschel, following Aquinas, situates the passage in the context of rewards given to the ‘saints.’31 Hentschel notes Aquinas’ disagreement with a prominent interpretation of the day that saints will enter into a state (i.e. intermediate state), where they will continue to hope for another state as if the intermediate state is the same as the pre somatic death state – see St. Thomas’ Commentary on the passage.32 Hentschel, discussing Aquinas’ view of the Gloss, says, As we will see, what is most interesting about this initial line of reasoning is that Thomas, in one sense, does not wholly disagree with it. Christians do hope to obtain an incorruptible body, and this is a legitimate hope. However, this is neither the hope that Paul is talking about here in 2 Cor 5, nor is the “building from God … [eternal] in the heavens” the hoped-for resurrection body. On the contrary, the “house not made with hands” of 5:1 is “heavenly glory,” even “God himself,” which the saints obtain immediately upon death.33 In Aquinas’ view then, the passage of 2 Cor. 5 teaches that the blessing received is the beatific vision (i.e. seeing God), not an ambiguous state of existence or an ‘indefinite’ period of hopeful anticipation of the resurrection of the body. Hentschel helpfully comments on Aquinas’s view, What is this reward, this heavenly glory? It is the fullness of “the clear vision of God, in the face of Christ” being preached by the saints to enlighten interiorly those who hear and accept it. Although by faith believers receive a foretaste of this glory on earth, it is only after death that they will “see God in His Essence, wherein consists ‘eternal life.’” Thomas here offers a nuanced description of the beatific vision, which he equates with the “house not made with hands” of 5:1 and the “heavenly dwelling” of 5:2, presenting it as the hope that enables the saints to endure their present afflictions for the sake of the gospel.34 In the larger context of 2 Corinthians concerning suffering, it is not merely an eschatological duality of encouragement for being found clothed in Christ, but the reality that on death we will see God because Paul in 5:7 implicitly connects our heavenly dwelling not with ‘faith’ but with ‘sight’ (pointing back to 4:18 leading up to the goal of seeing God). This becomes the context for encouragement during times of suffering. At this point, it should be clear to the reader that Aquinas offers us a persuasive interpretation of 2 Corinthians 5 and the intermediate state that supports neither a hazy intermediate state nor an ambiguous or mere ‘eschatological duality,’ but a robust theological view of the intermediate state where persons persist and know God.

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Levering supports the notion of an immaterial soul as substance because an entity is required for persistence and because that entity must be higher than physicality to know God because God is not physical. He says, in line with Aquinas’ view of an immaterial substance, As we have seen, Murphy argues that “the New Testament authors are not intending to teaching anything about humans metaphysical composition.” Although I agree that the New Testament authors are not developing philosophical views, it does seem to me that they include certain anthropological assumptions and claims in their writings. Jesus and Paul affirm that humans undergo bodily death without undergoing annihilation. When Jesus warns about caring for one’s soul which humans cannot kill, and when Paul envisions a period of disembodied life with Christ after death, these passages uphold the place of reflection on the spiritual soul within a biblically guided eschatology. Far from being redundant, the doctrine of the soul allows for the New Testament’s rich account of graced participation in the divine life, both now and in the life to come. Christian eschatology is right to affirm the doctrine not only philosophically but also biblically.35 Here Levering rightly notes the ontological distinction of soul to body and the transcendental nature of the soul beyond the body as accounting for the biblical portrayal of that distinction between human persons and their bodies. Furthermore, it is a represented belief in the tradition to affirm the notion that souls are indivisible and immortal because they can know God who is immaterial, indivisible, and immortal. Athanasius, in agreement with Aquinas and Augustine, sees the soul as immortal because it knows God and, even more, is able to contemplate God in its redeemed state.36 Aquinas supports this and shows the soul’s relationship to eschatology. Aquinas thinking on the intermediate state does not end there. What remains is an existential tension between disembodiment and re-embodiment as reflected in 2 Corinthians 5:3, 4. In verses 3 and 4, we see that Paul’s discussion of being clothed and being naked are metaphors for the person’s disembodied existence and re-embodiment with being clothed. This leads to the soul’s natural desire to be clothed. On a robust view of substance dualism, one can make sense of this passage. Personal persistence occurs in the intermediate state. During this state, persons come to know God in a unique way – the beatific vision. Yet, while in this state, there is an even better (construed subjectively, phenomenologically, and experientially) state to be in – namely embodiment. Human souls, arguably, are naturally embodied.37 By natural, a proponent of PBSD can account for the soul body union in terms of functional or phenomenological unity, whereby the soul gains certain powers and capacities in virtue of the body. This, then, accounts for the natural fear of disembodiment that Paul discusses.38 Furthermore, this disembodied state is necessary given the reality of the corrupt body, and this may be the context in which many commentators and theologians negatively discuss the body.39

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Hentschel notes on Aquinas’ view that the body must dissolve. He states, The body’s corruption weighs the soul down, distracting it from the beatific vision. ‘[What] is corrupted and decayed is not renewed except by means of corruption [i.e., dissolution] … . Wherefore since human nature has incurred the defect of the necessity of death, it cannot return to immortality save by means of death’. On this account, the saints ‘dare to face the dangers of death’, knowing that only through death and the soul’s separation from the body will they move on from faithful hoping for the heavenly glory to their immediate participation in the beatific vision.40 It is important to note here the movement from the state of participation in the beatific vision apart from corruption, but it does not end here. Aquinas, in light of 2 Corinthians 5, does not consider the intermediate state beatific vision as final, but part of the process leading to somatic resurrection. The natural desire for embodiment, based on the soul’s phenomenological unity with the body, tells us that the process during the intermediate state is incomplete. Somatic resurrection is required to complete the process of perfection. Hentschel, rightly argues, Thomas hints in this direction at the closing of his analysis of 5:1–4 when he notes with approval the apostle’s natural desire that the corrupt, mortal body would be ‘swallowed up by life’, an explicit reference to 1 Cor 15:54, where Paul argues (according to Aquinas’ interpretation) for the necessity of the resurrection of the body.41 Hentschel proceeds to elaborate on why re-embodiment is necessary. Hentschel argues, based on Aquinas’ anthropology, that humans are incomplete and not full human persons without the body.42 As seen above and in the previous chapter, I argue that persons are essentially souls that have a teleological, functional, and phenomenological attachment relation to bodies. When Hentschel speaks of Aquinas’ view of persons as not ‘full’ without the body, I am not entirely sure what he means. However, I put forward a line of reasoning that offers a metaphysical substance dualist accounting of this passage on the afterlife, which is generally in line with Hentschel and Aquinas.43 The reason persons require re-embodiment is because embodiment is the natural state of human beings. In the same way that the corrupt body hinders the beatific vision, so it is that the glorified resurrected body enhances or intensifies the knowledge and experience of the soul’s vision of God.44 This is not to say that saints during the intermediate state have a different blessing or a less desirable stance or relationship to God, but that without the resurrected body the person will not know/experience the fullness of his/her state (yet the body is not limited to this noetic function, necessarily).45 The metaphysical accounting for this view is Cartesianism, or PBSD, where the body contributes and/or actualizes powers/properties to the soul and adds a quality to life that

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otherwise could not be known without the body. Thus, even in the beatific vision, the soul’s vision of God is phenomenally greater with the body. In agreement with Aquinas, I suggest that 2 Corinthians 4 and 5 should be read with 1 Corinthians 15. In 2 Corinthians 5 assuming chap. 4, Paul highlights the interim period of the person as the beginning of the beatific vision (i.e. man’s purpose), yet also communicates the connection this has to somatic resurrection in 5:4. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul highlights somatic resurrection yet implies and presupposes the state between somatic death and somatic resurrection where persons persist. With Wright, we have an ‘eschatological duality’ concerning the afterlife, yet we also have substance dualism. Eschatological duality corresponds to and is grounded in metaphysical or ontological dualism – what I have here called PBSD.46 Thus, we have a common sense view of persons situated in a robust biblical-theology of personal eschatology (with differing stages of the afterlife literally corresponding to a substance with novel properties). Second Corinthians 5 is likely not a discussion on somatic resurrection. The language Paul uses here is quite distinct from his language in 1 Corinthians 15. There are connections and allusions found in 2 Corinthians 5 to 1 Corinthians 15, but the overwhelming teaching of 2 Corinthians 5 seems to be distinct from what we find in 1 Corinthians 15. Additionally, the passage is not likely discussing what some might call an intermediate bodily state. It might be argued that God gives us a new body during the intermediate state that is distinct from the physical resurrection state. Paul’s use of ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ language seems to propose some strong distinctions that persist in chap. 5, where the ‘outer’ is excised. Paul’s use of the language of ‘clothes’ seems to support the idea that the external is taken away and our new ‘clothes’ are heavenly something quite distinct from our earthly ‘clothes.’ The ‘clothes’ may be a reference to Christ clothing us in our heavenly states. What seems clear is that this is not referring to a new physical body that is continuous with the present body we inhabit. Some might respond by advising that we read 2 Corinthians 5 in light of the broader Scriptural teaching, which seems to advocate monism. However, it is not clear that the overarching Scriptural teaching favours monism over dualism. Instead, it may favour a kind of holism, but this is not inconsistent with dualism. I argue that Paul’s language that seems to some to be a kind of monism is instead a kind of functional holism. Drawing from Cooper, he argues that the Scriptures, especially the Old Testament, teach that man is one functional unit even though the person is composed of two substances.47 This means existentially a person having two concrete parts function in unison practically. First, my view says that human souls could have the essential property of natural embodiment or aptness for embodiment. This means that the soul/person has the ability to exist on its own and function to some capacity without the body, but is naturally embodied. This in part might account for the functional holism argued for by Cooper. Second, as I have argued, PSD/PBSD regarding humans causally requires a functional unity with the body, and we ought to consider the

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history of souls/persons when embodied. This naturally lends itself to a kind of ‘integrative dualism,’48 the notion that the two substances are tightly joined together and the two things become incorporated in the activities of the other, yet the two parts are not ontologically mixed as a third kind of thing. Of course, this opens the door for the possibility that they will not always function together, say in cases where I intend to raise my arm and there is some sort of interface problem between my mind and my body, but this is further support for dualism.49 Holding to PSD/PBSD over COSD in no way undermines the functional holism of the person when embodied, as far as I can see.50 A positive addition to this view is that there is a natural opening for the soul to function in two distinct ways (i.e. embodiment and disembodiment).

Conclusion I argue that not only is a soul required for persistence (a la Cooper), but that a person is required to account for the vision of God described in 2 Corinthians 5. Following Thomas’ rich interpretation of the passage, as it is motivated by traditional concerns, seems to offer contemporaries a plausible reading. The Corinthians passage yields a clear teaching on the afterlife that is intimately connected to somatic resurrection, but not identical to it.51 On this basis, Cartesianism provides a more plausible account for the particulars of the passage than other anthropologies because of the mind-body distinction.52

Appendix Two objections to substance dualist theological anthropology In his recent work, Kevin Corcoran takes a whole swath of passages in the Old and New Testaments often used to support substance dualism and argues that these passages do not clearly or obviously support substance dualism.53 Surprisingly Corcoran does not mention Genesis 2:7 and Ecclesiastes 12:7 in his discussion. To make sense of the passages he cites, Corcoran offers his constitution theory as a model of anthropology able to accommodate these passages just as well as dualism. I make two claims in response to Corcoran. First, I argue to the contrary that some of the passages do seem to have a metaphysical implication and favour substance dualism (e.g. 2 Corinthians 5:8 and 12:2). I say this based upon the 2 Corinthians passages where there does seem to be a clear metaphysical implication given what I argued above. In fact, the OT passages related to death and the afterlife seem to be underdetermined in and of themselves apart from Christological principles as a guide where Christ descends into hell to preach to the saints. Second, as to the passages that are underdetermined (e.g. Old Testament passages), I argue that this does not mean that Corcoran’s reading is on equal footing with substance dualism – given the history of interpretation and a Christological reading of various underdetermined OT passages. Corcoran would need some other grid and would need to show this as

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a more plausible reading than what I put forward above. In the end, it seems to me substance dualism is not only a plausible reading, but it may be a slightly better reading than the Corcoran’s CV (i.e. Constitution view wherein the somatic/neural gives rise to higher-order properties and the somatic part constitutes the first-person perspective but is not identical to the somatic part) reading.54 A second objection is directed at those endorsing various New Testament passages in favour of substance dualism. Kevin Corcoran argues that these passages do not entail substance dualism and can just as easily be accommodated by CV. The problem with Corcoran’s first objection is that he does not take account of all the relevant data in the Old Testament, nor that certain passages have metaphysical implications given that what I have argued for regarding 2 Cor. 5 gives us strong grounds for affirming substance dualism. There are passages often not discussed supporting the interpretation given here on 2 Cor. 5. Consider the story of Saul using the services of the Witch of Endor to have a conversation with Samuel (who was dead in the grave), which, if true, requires that persons are immaterial substances or something other than material substances. Other passages concerning the term ‘breath’ seem to imply the existence of persons disembodied, or that persons exist while not contingently attached to their bodies. Furthermore, OT passages concerning the dead moving and conversing make a strong prima-facie case (in conjunction with a common sense view of persons) that the Old Testament passages on persons entail substance dualism and, specifically, the idea that persons are souls that can exist and function, to some degree, disembodied.55 Further evidence for this conclusion is supported when we take these Old Testament passages together in light of the exegetical support from 2 Corinthians 5. Corcoran’s second objection is that the common New Testament passages cited in favour of substance dualism do not entail substance dualism, but I suggest that they do.56 The passages he is referring to include the following: Matthew 10:28, Luke 10:27, 2 Corinthians 5:8, 2 Corinthians 12:2, and 1 Thessalonians 5:23.57 Corcoran argues that these passages can be read consistently considering a Constitution theory of persons.58 Corcoran offers an interesting and novel interpretation of these passages, especially the passages found in 2 Corinthians, but it seems that he does not sufficiently account for all that is contained in these passages. He interprets 2 Cor. 5 as entailing a distinction between person and body in such a manner that his constitution view could account for it. However, I think Corcoran is missing something important about these passages (specifically Matthew 10:28; 2 Corinthians 5:8 and 12:2). Paul is not simply making a distinction between persons and bodies in the Corinthians passages, such that one could read persons as being constituted by their bodies but not identical to their bodies, but that persons actually exist without their bodies. Paul speaks as if in his disembodied state he will be with the Lord similar to the language in Ecclesiastes, after the body returns to dust the person returns to the Lord.59 Paul uses descriptive language to suggest that persons actually exist and are conscious during that dis-embodied existence.

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This is more than simply saying there is a conceptual or modal distinction between body and person. One could argue for an immediate resurrection to account from these passages, but there are two things to note given the previous chapter. First, the nature of 2 Corinthians language is different from the language in 1 Corinthians 15 regarding somatic resurrection. These are simply two differing modes of being. Second, immediate resurrection would seem to deflate the language of being ‘naked’ and being ‘clothed.’ While Corcoran may take an immediate resurrection view of the afterlife, it seems highly unlikely based on the language used in 2 Corinthians 5 where Paul uses Hellenistic language which ammounts to the soul’s persistence. It seems that Corcoran would need to develop arguments in favour of one of the other two interpretations of the passage: immediate resurrection view or the extinction re-creation view. In the end, a clear and persuasive reading of 2 Corinthians 5 gives us the picture of a state before the physical resurrection after somatic death, which seems to require substance dualism, particularly the common substance dualism that makes a distinction between persons as substances that are embodied. Before concluding, Kevin Corcoran does offer a novel alternative to the positions given above, including substance dualism concerning the intermediate state. Corcoran offers a metaphysical thesis as an alternative that might be an intermediate state of bodily existence, if in fact Scripture teaches the intermediate state.60 Corcoran does little to offer a theory of how this works, so there is not much to analyze because there is little content available. What is important for understanding this view is the distinction between the body that constitutes the person and the person that is identical to a firstperson perspective that somehow persists in virtue of an intermediate bodily state of existence. This is an interesting view, but seems to run into four immediate problems. First, if I were to conjecture, it seems that one way would be for God to fashion or create a body that could sustain the first-person perspective, but it is doubtful that this would be the same person because it is an entirely different body that constitutes the first-person perspective. Minimally, there is an added difficulty for this view not present on an intermediate-soul view. Second, on CV it seems that a first-person perspective requires a suitable neural structure/brain for existing or persisting, and if he wants to stay connected to Ecclesiastical tradition, then some sort of causal connection to the previous body.61 If he advances this sort of scenario, then the problem he runs into is the problem of trying to account for the notion that God must somehow transfer the firstperson perspective from the one body-part to the next body-part. It is difficult to see how God would do this because he is not sustaining a substance, but a set of properties (alternatively one might think of the first-person perspective as an impure substance) that are somehow causally connected with the body/brain as the hypostasis. For God to do so would mean that he is transferring a set of properties or an impure relation, but the impure relation requires the body. I can hardly conceive of God sustaining a set of properties or an impure relation without sustaining a proper substance that constitutes the thing with it. Third,

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Corcoran could opt for a fission view of the person and say that the ‘corpse’ has latent properties that cause a body that emerges with the same first-person perspective. This too has problems. There is the potential problem of temporal gaps between the first-person perspective existing, not existing then existing again. Corcoran may respond that there is not a gap between the person’s existence pre-somatic death and post-somatic death. Instead, he says there could be an overlap of physical life sustaining the first-person perspective. This may be, but here is a final difficulty. If it is a material body, then it is not anything like a material body that we are privy to as human beings in this life because the process of physical fission is something that occurs outside of our spatial framework, which results in a minimal dualist view of persons. Additionally, it raises the question of whether or not somatic death actually occurs, which seems to undermine the common sense assumption that the body is dead in the grave. This seems a rather odd consequence of an already ad-hoc solution.62 I propose that a persisting soul in the intermediate state is philosophically superior and more natural given what the Scriptures teach. In fact, PBSD provides a ground for reading the Scriptures and allowing them to speak on matters of personal persistence. Assuming Corcoran’s minimal dualism, his metaphysical accounting of the intermediate state is implausible at best. For allaying any question over the validity of arguing in favour of PBSD where persons are identified with simple immaterial souls, let me give a few reasons for the significance of this position. First, I think it is a significant and worthy task to understand the nature of humans. Second, I have shown that the view defended here has significant implications for a theological understanding of persons.63 Third, this results in a proper accounting and a natural reading of Scripture. Fourth, a simple and immaterial view of persons provides the preconditions for the possibility of disembodied existence – and by extension natural immortality. Fifth, souls provide the metaphysical basis for an epistemology of immortal beings. This, too, is a result of the nature of the soul as substance. This I believe is significant. I do not suppose the above scriptural lines of reasoning will persuade the Christian materialist, but this is not my objective. Instead, I suggest a metaphysical accounting that allows Scripture to speak. In fact, I have argued that the notion that persons are identified with souls is a defensible biblical position of human persons and consistent with a reading of other passages in Scripture. In the end, I do not presume that the Scriptural reasoning given above will persuade the materialist – this would be expecting too much from this brief chapter. What I have done here is move beyond the case for some generic dualism argued for by John Cooper and argued specifically for substance dualism as the necessary metaphysical accounting of the Scriptural teaching on the intermediate state/afterlife, and that PBSD best accounts (both metaphysically and epistemologically) for this Scriptural teaching. This is something that Cooper’s research seems to make necessary, but Cooper does not venture far enough to make this stronger claim.

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Notes 1 Psychosomatic unity is a very slippery term that is often used in the theological literature. It seems that it is used many times in reference to hylomorphism, but it is not entirely clear if this is to be construed along materialist monist lines or more on dualistic lines. Furthermore, the distinctions of body and mind being conceptually, modally, or actually distinct are normally left unspecified in the theological literature. Old Testament scholars often argue that the OT gives a functional picture of human nature, but I would suggest that if the NT and OT have one Divine author and the NT affirms soul-body dualism, then this cannot be. For one prominent example of OT scholarship on this topic, see Bruce Waltke, Old Testament Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing, 2007), see chap. 8; see especially pp. 224 and 969. Waltke argues that the Old Testament teaches a functional view of humans while the New Testament teaches that we have a soul. He also seems to affirm the idea that the Old Testament view of death and afterlife is just different from the New Testament teaching. 2 See H. Wheeler Robinson, The Christian Doctrine of Man (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1911). Johannes Pedersen, Israel, Its Life and Culture Vol. 1, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1953), pp. 99–181. 3 See Oscar Cullmann, Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Body? (London: Epworth, 1958). 4 See James Barr, Semantics of Biblical Language (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), chap. 2. 5 See John W. Cooper, Body, Soul and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), chap. 9 and 10. 6 See Robert H. Gundry, Soma in Biblical Theology: With Emphasis on Pauline Anthropology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Press, 1987), p. 119. Gundry discusses the Pauline view as dualistic yet with an emphasis on the holistic unity of the parts. See Robert H. Stein, Luke, The New American Commentary, vol. 24 (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1992), p. 593. See Luke Timothy Johnson, The Gospel of Luke: Sacra Pagina Series, vol. 3 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991). See Ben Witherington III support for the traditional interpretation of 2 Corinthians 5 for substance dualism, Conflict and Community in Corinth: A Social-Rhetorical Commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 1995), p. 391. N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Fortress, 2003); Wright coined the term ‘two stage view,’ which supports some kind of dualism. Also Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI), Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life, trans. M. Waldstein (Philadelphia: Catholic University of America, 1988). One noteworthy example includes N.T. Wright in The Resurrection of the Son of God. When discussing various options on the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15, N.T. Wright explicitly affirms a ‘two-stage view’ of personal eschatology as being taught in the passage. This two-stage view seems to require the affirmation, implicitly, of substance dualism. In the Pauline literature there is support for both monism and dualism see the following. Robert Jewett, Paul’s Anthropological Terms (Leiden: Brill, 1971). W.D. Stacey, The Pauline View of Man (London: Macmillan, 1956). Stacey highlights the Hellenistic background of Paul. W.D. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism (London: SPCK, 1955). M.E. Dahl, The Resurrection of the Body (London: SCM, 1962). H.M. Shires, The Eschatology of Paul in the Light of Modern Scholarship (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1966). A clear dualist is L. Cerfauz, The Christian in the Theology of St. Paul (London: Chapman, 1967). 7 See John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. by Henry Beveridge (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), p. 267 (III.xxv.6). It is true that Calvin is much less inclined toward philosophical speculation about what transcendence means. He is not given to mystical encounters as we find in the patristics and medieval theologians, but he does not specify. Aquinas affirms human transcendence in ST, III, q.49 and

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q.52. These are just a few places that reflect Aquinas’s teaching. Naturally, though, Aquinas reflects a teaching in the history of interpretation prior to him and develops it further. One passage of Scripture often cited in the history of interpretation as support for this is John 17:3. I am thinking for instance of a variety of contemporary substance dualisms that are all holistic in that they emphasize that human persons are somehow soul-body composites or compounds. Some examples include the following Thomistic substance dualism, particularly, exemplified in the likes of Scott B. Rae and J.P. Moreland, Taliaferro’s integrative dualism, Swinburne’s soul on body functional view, Cooper’s holistic dualism and, possibly, Hasker’s emergent substance dualism. The view that I modestly propose, namely CSD and EC, was espoused earlier. It is similar to Swinburne’s view, yet does not posit as much of a dependence relation on the neurological aggregate as say Swinburne posits. It is also similar to Cooper’s holistic dualism in that, while a person is identified with the soul, the latent potentiality for embodiment lay in the human soul. It is unclear in Cooper’s view whether he assumes a spatial soul. His view is somewhere in between Thomistic and Cartesian substance dualism. My view is similar to Hasker’s in that there is a weak kind of emergence that occurs with the interaction between the soul and the body that is a kind of emergentcreationism. My view is closer to Taliaferro’s integrative substance dualism for both are varieties of Person-body dualism that emphasize a sufficient distinction between soul and body for the soul’s independent existence along with a holistic notion of the soul when embodied. It is important to note that I am not conflating popular level work with academic scholarship. My only point is that within much contemporary thinking on theology there is a general disdain for Platonism among academics and semi-popular level theology, as I discuss in this section and forthcoming sections of this chapter. Randy Alcorn, Heaven (Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House Publishers, 2004), p. 52. Alcorn cites other authors’ highlighting the physical imagery of Heaven, thus emphasizing its this-worldliness even if it is without sin and corruption. See Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), p. 1158. Anthony A. Hoekema, ‘Heaven: Not Just an Eternal Day Off,’ Christianity Today (June 6, 2003). Also, see Alister E. McGrath, A Brief History of Heaven (Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2003), p. 40. However, many of the Scriptures speak of the heavenly realities using earthly images for a couple of reasons that do not entail that Heaven is thoroughly physical. First, it uses imagery that is familiar. Second, it often points beyond itself where it does not offer us a complete description in physical imagery. One example is that it may have had a positive effect on the Christian view of the mind highlighting passages like Romans 12:2 that speak of renewing the mind. Additionally, given that the Christian God is an immaterial Being, Platonism helps the mind think beyond mere physicality. In fact, most patristic theologians who developed key Trinitarian and Christological doctrines were Platonists or Neo-Platonists. It seems some scholars run the risk of treating the immaterial for humans in a non-realist manner or mind-dependent manner. See Matthew Levering, Jesus and the Demise of Death, p. 9. Quoting Joseph Ratzinger, ‘Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections (The Regensburg Lecture),’ p. 22, app. 1 in James V. Schall, The Regensburg Lecture (South Bend, IN: St. Augustines’ Press, 2007), p. 22, and p. 136. See J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone (New York: Arthur A. Levine Books, 1997), p. 297. Thanks to Jennifer Farris for bringing to mind this quote. Similar to the previous chapter on the philosophical-theology of persons, I have in mind those varieties of composite or compound substance dualism that struggle to make a sufficient distinction between the person and body. Some versions of composite

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Cartesian souls, hamartiology, and soteriology substance dualism do not fall into this trap, but often use confused terminology. Others, say, hylomorphism and some construals of Thomistic substance dualism fall into this trap. I prefer to use the term PSD or person-body dualism and specify the idea that the human soul naturally has a substantial relationship to a body that is external and contingent. This saves me from falling into ambiguity. See also John Cooper, ‘Biblical Anthropology and the Soul,’ in Body, Soul and Life Everlasting: Essays on the Metaphysics of Human Persons, ed. by Kevin Corcoran (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), pp. 227–228. Cooper also mentions other possibilities: Augustinian, Kantian, Idealism, emergent materialism, and process philosophy and the self. Cooper is right that these views allow for survival, but to suggest that all of these views account for the biblical conception of survival seems too generous. Emergent materialism, even though allowing for mental properties, would have great difficulty in accounting for the mental properties surviving without the complete substance. Earlier, I argue that all three thinkers affirmed that persons are identified with their souls, place a premium on the soul as, basically, a mind, and can exist apart from the body. Additionally, I argue that laity and those in academia have an ambiguous understanding of the soul and body relationship. This is true to an even greater extent in the theological literature. This is distinct from other varieties of substance dualism that are similar to the position I argue for here. For example, in Swinburne’s view it is highly uncertain whether or not a soul can function independently from a body. As stated earlier, he holds that the soul can exist independently from the body, but not function. This is also distinct from a variety of substance dualism known as emergent substance dualism – famously developed by Hasker. In this view, it is highly suspect as to whether or not the soul can function disembodied. In most varieties of Thomistic substance dualism the soul cannot function disembodied and the persons do not survive. ‘Natural’ is a semi-technical term for the literal meaning of the passage or the authorial intent. As I show below, the literal meaning of 2 Corinthians is accessible to the reader in terms of his metaphors having references to his discussion concerning persons and their bodies. An alternative interpretation, is less than literal in that it takes the metaphors as references to the already not-yet, which is a category derived from a broader biblical theology and less from the background language and the immediate context. Yet, I believe one can have both, with a priority given to the literal or natural. It is prevalent among contemporary theologians to assume some sort of physicalist view of persons and dismiss pure dualism or any dualism as being outside the parameters of biblical anthropology. See Joel Green’s recent works. See especially Nancey Murphy, Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 16–17. Kevin Corcoran offers a more balanced and fair treatment of various dualisms by saying that one can coherently affirm them in their understanding of a biblical anthropology. See Corcoran, Rethinking Human Nature: A Christian Materialist Alternative to the Soul (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2006), p. 45. Corcoran argues for a species of emergent-monism or materialism known as a constitution theory of persons. I am tempted to use the term ‘immortality of the soul;’ however, I do so loosely. I do not wish to enter into a fine-grained discussion about the biblical portrayal of precisely what this means. Loosely, it conveys the notion that souls persist beyond somatic death. Whether this means that souls are contingently immortal (dependent on Divine grace), naturally immortal (souls persist unless there is an additional Divine action of snuffing the soul out of existence), or essentially/necessarily immortal (the Platonic and Origenistic view) is a more specific question. Concretely, one may affirm a kind of annihilationism as compatible with the natural immortality of the soul where God at some point in the afterlife simply snuffs some souls out of existence, which otherwise would have continued forever.

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21 See David Hentschel, ‘Thomas Aquinas, 2 Corinthians 5, and the Christian Hope for Life after Death,’ Journal of Theological Interpretation vol. 8, no.1 (2014), see especially pp. 73–77. In it, Hentschel is engaging Aquinas’s interpretation with N.T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope. Wright is explicitly interested in the resurrection of the body, which he argues is the hope of the Christian. Thanks to Joel Green for first pointing out David Hentschel’s article on 2 Corinthians 5. 22 See David E. Aune, ‘Anthropological Duality in the Eschatology of 2 Corinthians 4:16– 5:10,’ in Paul Beyond the Judaism/Hellenism Divide, ed. by Troels Engberg-Pedersen (Leiden: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), pp. 220–221. 23 Ibid. 220–221. We can do so in terms of functional integrity, phenomenological unity, and what I have argued for is teleo-functional unity. 24 I have shown that soul persistence during the intermediate state was prominent among patristics, and the Platonic emphasis on the vision of God. As to 2 Corinthians 5, see examples of this from the Church Fathers. See Clement of Alexandria Stromata Book IV, Tertullian Against Marcion Book V, and Irenaeus Against Heresies Book II. 25 This becomes particularly important if we assume the image of God is an immutable feature or property that all human souls bear necessarily and essentially. We might see this passage as teaching a contrast between the natural and the spiritual (i.e. immutable and immortal), such that what bears the image is the soul that finds its teleological completion in the beatific vision. 26 In the same way that functionally and phenomenologically there is not a disjunction between mind and body. Additionally, as argued above, there is not a disjunction between eschatology of physicality and spirituality or heaven and earth. However, there are distinctions. 27 Again, this term refers to the stages of the afterlife for persons after somatic death. 28 Hentschel, in footnote 11, is right to note that while Wright has a place for the intermediate state, Wright downplays its significance and views it as in tension with the rest of the scriptural teaching on persons and eschatology. See Wright’s more developed account in The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), see pp. 216 and 312–74. Ben Witherington interprets 2 Cor. 5 as distinct from somatic resurrection but also downplays its significance and views the intermediate state almost negatively. Systematic theologian Gregg Allison in his ‘Toward a Theology of Human Embodiment,’ Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, vol. 13, no. 2 (2009), 4–17 (http://www.sbts.edu/resources/files/2009/10/sbjt-2009summer-a llison.pdf) (summer 2009; accessed 21 April 2014): on p. 5, Allison says, ‘The soul (or spirit) will survive death and continue to exist while the body is sloughed off, but this is an abnormal condition (2 Cor 5:1–10).’ He says nothing of the positive aspect of the soul during the intermediate state and fails to make the link between the soul’s vision of God to the somatic resurrection as part and parcel of man’s hope in the afterlife. At the end of footnote 1, Allison spends a good deal of space discussing the negative aspects of Platonic influence on earlier Christian thought concerning the body, but does not give due recognition to the influence or similarity of Platonic thought with Christian thought regarding the soul. Such that, one has a kind of inversion of Gnosticism where now it is all about physicality, earth, and the body. Unfortunately, this is all too common. I am not saying there are not negative aspects to Platonism, but such a response to the benefits of Platonism is partly unwarranted. 29 See Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Letters of Saint Paul to the Corinthians, trans. by F.R. Larcher, O.P., B. Mortensen, and D. Keating and ed. by J. Mortensen and E. Alarcon (Lander, Wyoming: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2012), 472. 30 Hentschel, 9–10. By literal, it seems he is referring to what I refer to as ‘natural.’ 31 Ibid. 11. Wright, along with Protestant interpreters, for one, does not see a sharp distinction between clergy and laity. Another passage that appears to support the

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Cartesian souls, hamartiology, and soteriology notion of the immediate hope of the believer/saint is found in Philippians 1:21, pp. 23–24. ‘For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain …. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account.’ In verse 21 we see the context is dying and living. To live is Christ. To die is gain. Why? Paul answers because to die is to go and be with Christ. The contrary is to not die and to stay in the flesh (i.e. body). Ibid. 12. Hentschel argues that this pessimism found in the Gloss is common today, and that Wright, while holding to a two-stage view, downplays the significance of the interim period between somatic death and somatic resurrection. See Aquinas’ Commentary on 2 Corinthians 4:16–18, pp. 461–464, and 5:1–4, pp. 465–468. See also McGuckin, ‘Saint Thomas Aquinas,’ 201; cf. Beryl Smalley, Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), p. 56. Here McGuckin is careful to note that Aquinas had a high view of the Gloss, so going against it is significant. This negativity toward disembodied existence seems common among biblical scholars and theologians today, yet the interpretation here seems to offer an alternative picture that comports very well with substance dualism. While it is natural for the soul to be united with a body, the soul’s being with the Lord is a positive state and part of the redemptive process of the soul. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. See 2 Corinthians 4:3–6 where Paul discusses the initial grace as a kind of tasting on reception of the gospel on earth. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, III.59.5. This discussion grows out of the commentary on 2 Corinthians 5 and John 17:3. See Matthew Levering, Jesus and the Demise of Death (Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2012), p. 107. See Athanasius in Contra Gentes – De Incarnatione, trans. by Robert W. Thomson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971). Also see Thomas G. Weinandy, Athanasius: A Theological Introduction (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 19–20. I make a distinction from Hentschel here, where he calls it ‘essential’ embodiment on p. 9. I am not sure what he means by ‘essential,’ for if the person persists and can exist on his own apart from the body then the body is not essential in an ontological sense. 2 Cor. 5:3. Short of what some contemporary authors would call Gnosticism (or Origenism), many throughout history may have referred to the body this way not because the body, per se, is bad, but that the corrupt body is bad. Hentschel, ‘Thomas Aquinas, 2 Corinthians 5, and the Christian Hope for Life after Death,’ 16. See Aquinas ST Supp. 78.1. In the context of 2 Cor. 5:5–10. Ibid. 17. Ibid. 17–18. What I argue here is especially in line with Aquinas if we take Aquinas’ view to be virtually the same as that view of the soul in the Plato‑Descartes‑Augustine tradition, in that the soul is not physical and divisible, instead it is higher than the physical, and with capacities higher than the physical as a distinct substance in its own right. Richard Swinburne argues this position in his Mind, Brain, and Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 172–173. However, this is quite a controversial claim. While most would not affirm that Aquinas was strictly Aristotelian, they would hold something like intrinsic potency in the soul that finds completion in the material cause. One might see further textual justification for this reading in Romans 6 where Paul discusses mortality and sin in reference to the ‘body.’ This is not to say, again, that the body is intrinsically evil but it must be assumed in the post-Fall context awaiting somatic resurrection. Ibid. 21. Alongside 1 Cor. 15:54 where the resurrected body is imperishable and immortal, we should read the necessity of the body in terms of phenomenal sensations.

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Furthermore, this process is a kind of stepping up upon the persons’ experiencing glory and seeing God in 2 Cor. where the body is ‘swallowed up in life.’ I am not suggesting an idealist construal of the body, although that is a coherent alternative to what I offer here. Once again see N.T. Wright, ‘Mind, Spirit, Soul and Body: All for One and One for All Reflections on Paul’s Anthropology in his Complex Contexts,’ presented to Society of Christian Philosophers Regional Meeting, Fordham University on March 2011. Now published in Wright’s Pauline Perspectives: Essays on Paul, 1978–2013 ), chap. 28. Cooper, Body, Soul and Life Everlasting, chap. 2. See Charles Taliaferro, Consciousness and the Mind of God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). To my knowledge, Charles Taliaferro is responsible for the notion ‘integrative’ substance dualism. Granted a non-reductive physicalist could contend for this, but it is much more difficult for a non-reductive physicalist to account for intentional states and causal efficacy if there is an ontic distinction between the mind and body. A substance dualist can better account for this when he says that the mind is a substance that has powers respective to its nature. There is a need for a bridge on both views, but when the mind is not construed as a substance but as a property-thing, it is difficult to see how it can have real causal efficacy. This logic applies to hylomorphism and emergent substance dualism against pure dualism, as well. Both positions run into a potential problem of being monistic rather than dualistic. The union between the person and his body can be intimate, but it cannot be one ontological thing. Substance dualism implies this thesis. If there is a problem from functional holism, then it seems it is a problem for other dualists, but this is not a problem. Materialists in the contemporary theological literature still use this as objection against substance dualism, but as Cooper has argued the two substances are functionally united – hence no problem for substance dualism. For a recent objection to substance dualism on this ground in the literature see Nancey Murphy, Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies?, pp. 17–22. I have not specified the precise nature of this link between the eschatological relationship of soul and body here. I only argue that there is one based on Scripture’s teaching of personal eschatology, which is reflective of our experiences that souls and their bodies influence the other for good or bad. The view I put forward does allow for a richer and more complicated view of ‘death’ and of ‘life’ or ‘existence,’ something approaching what the Medievals held. The topic of the precise teleological relationship of soul and body is an interesting issue deserving a great deal more reflection. The notion of person/soul persistence after somatic death captures the ‘inner journey’ that we find in the Patristics, throughout Church history, and, especially, developed by Balthasar. See Devaid L. Schindler, ed., Hans Urs Von Balthasar: His Life and Work (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991). See Kevin Corcoran, Rethinking Human Nature: A Christian Materialist Alternative to the Soul (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2006), pp. 144–145. He cites the following passages: Deuteronomy 6:5; Isaiah 26:9; Isaiah 55:3; Matthew 10:28; Luke 10:27; 2 Corinthians 5:8; 2 Corinthians 12:2; and 1 Thessalonians 5:23. Kevin Corcoran, Rethinking Human Nature: A Christian Materialist Alternative to the Soul (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), chap. 6. Ibid. 137 and 140. It is not that the Scriptures merely teach the doctrine of bodily resurrection or that we can simply have a first-person perspective as with CV, but that a thing actually persists. Ibid. 139–144. Ibid. 145. Ibid. 144–147.

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59 Hence, consistent with the natural reading of the Old Testament passages I discuss above. 60 See Corcoran, Rethinking Human Nature, pp. 144–147. On p. 143, Corcoran criticises John Cooper’s list of views and offers an alternative. 61 See Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and the Resurrection (New York: St. Vladimirs Seminary Press, 2002), pp. 46–48. Arguably, the soul supplies this continuous link. This is commonly taught by the Patristics. It is also clear in Paul’s letters that there is a causal connection between the pre-death body and the resurrected body. 62 My worry is that a fission scenario would entail Divine deception in a similar fashion to the body-snatching view put forward by Peter van Inwagen. However, I am unsure that it would entail this ethical problem. 63 In keeping with a substantial ontology in contrast to mere relational or participatory ontologies.

Part IV

Cartesian souls and personal eschatology

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Picturing the interim state as a Cartesian

My conclusion – that truths about persons are other than truths about their bodies and parts thereof … A framework of thought which makes sense of this fact is provided if we think of a person as body plus soul, such that the continuing of the soul alone guarantees the continuing of the person. (Richard Swinburne, The Evolution of the Soul, p. 160)

In the previous chapter, I argued that the Scriptural portrayal of humans requires an interpretation of an intermediate state between somatic death and somatic resurrection. It should be apparent that a soul doctrine provides a more plausible grounding for both the intermediate state and the success of persistence of a person from somatic death to a state of existence in the afterlife. Cartesianism is one option to account for the interim state, but, as I suggested, the doctrine of beatific vision seems to require Cartesianism or some similar ontology. I argued that, in keeping with much of the Christian tradition, we have plausible reasons from one paradigmatic passage (e.g. 2 Corinthians 5) for believing that the Scriptures advance a view of humans persisting as full persons not simply impersonal souls, which would seem to exclude certain philosophical anthropologies as plausible groundings or as providing the appropriate metaphysical pre-conditions for understanding the Scriptural teaching. I advanced Cartesianism, or PBSD, as a plausible grounding for the Scriptural teaching. But what remains is providing a conceivable story for persisting persons as substances. To this end, I intend to provide some coherent and plausible Cartesian stories for thinking this might actually occur. Additionally, I take up the discussion on the models of the soul’s origin and reflect on some of their challenges.

Conceivability/imagineability and persisting souls What is needed is a way of arriving at truth concerning future states of affairs based on one’s present experience of the world. In this way, philosophers have discussed the state of future affairs as grounded to some degree in what is real. Arguably, persons have the ability to conceive of future states of affairs based on or rooted in the present. Future states of affairs are possible states of affairs, which humans are capable of thinking about. Humans have the power of

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conceivability or imagineability wherein they can think of what is possible in light of what is real. Charles Taliaferro has advanced the discussion on conceivability/imagineability through the following principle. He says, If one can imagine (picture or describe) some states of affairs obtaining, and its obtaining is not ruled out by anything independently known (e.g. the obtaining is not incompatible with the law of noncontradiction, necessary truths about space and time, and so on), then one has prima facie reason for believing the state of affairs is possible.1 It is important to note that the principle Taliaferro advances is distinguishable from fantasy and creating fictional characters. Instead, it is rooted in our experience of the real world. Persons are capable of knowing specific possible truths because of their ability to conceive or image states of affairs in reality. For example, persons can know that it is possible that the Columbine shooting could have not taken place and Mitt Romney could have been elected President of the U.S. rather than Barack Obama in the most recent election. Furthermore, it seems plausible that in a future state of affairs, that President Barack Obama will no longer be the President of the U.S. We know that one President has stayed in office more than two terms, but this is against precedent. Even if it were possible that certain states of affairs could change and President Obama could persist as the President of the U.S., we have plausible reason to think that this will not occur. One of the important features by which to determine the prima facie justification for conceivable situations is coherence. If we can think of a potential state of affairs that is somehow grounded in present experience of the world that is also coherent, then we have grounds for thinking this could actually obtain in reality.

Imagining the persistent soul The most obvious way to conceive of the soul’s capability to persist during the interim period is in terms of rational intuition and in terms of thinking about a concept. Minimally, if one has reason to affirm the soul’s simplicity and independence from the body, then one could form a concept of the soul as a pure substance bearing at least one property distinct from the body. One could conceive of thinking apart from bodily and sensual experience on this basis. It is conceivable that apart from the body humans could still have rational thoughts about humans, the world, and God. There are some contemporary examples of conceiving or imagining the possible state of persisting as a person during the interim period. W.D. Hart advances the following story, Imagine that, still embodied, you wake up tomorrow in your bed. Before raising your eyelids, you stumble over to a mirror in your room. Pointing your face at the mirror, you now raise your eyelids. What you see in the

Picturing the interim state as a Cartesian 155 mirror is that your eye sockets are empty. You can imagine how your face without eyeballs would look in the mirror. Curious. So you probe the empty sockets with your little finger. You can imagine how they would feel, and how the empty channel where the optic nerve once lay would feel. Interesting. So you saw off the top of your skull with your surgical saw and, lo and behold, your skull is empty. You can imagine how your empty brainpan would look and feel. You’ve imagined what seems to be seeing without the two bodily organs, eyes and a brain, most people think are essential to seeing. You don’t need your legs to see, so imagine them away. You don’t need your arms to see, so imagine them away. You don’t need your trunk to see, so imagine it away. You don’t need the rest of your head to see, so imagine it away. Now your whole body is gone, but you are still there seeing what is reflected in the mirror. Of course that is no longer your face or any of your body; it is probably just the wall behind you. But you are still there, disembodied, seeing that wall reflected in the mirror.2 Richard Swinburne has also provided an arguably coherent conception of disembodied persons in his book The Coherence of Theism. Herein, his immediate purpose is to show that conceiving of God, as a spirit in action is coherent based on our own experience of self. My purposes here are much more modest in that I am attempting to say something about the person in terms of the afterlife. I offer Swinburne’s helpful thought experiment in its entirety, Imagine yourself, for example, gradually ceasing to be affected by alcohol or drugs, your thinking being equally coherent however men mess about with your brain. Imagine too that you cease to feel any pains, aches, and thrills, although you remain aware of what is going on in what has been called your body. You gradually find yourself aware of what is going on in bodies other than your own and other material objects at any place in space – at any rate to the extent of being able to give invariably true answers to questions about these things, an ability which proves unaffected by man interfering with lines of communication, e.g. turning off lights so that agents which rely on sight cannot see, shutting things in rooms so that agents which rely on hands to feel things cannot do so. You also come to see things from any point of view which you choose, possibly simultaneously, possibly not. You remain able to talk and wave your hands about, but find yourself able to move directly anything which you choose, including the hands of other people (although if you do move someone else’s hands, he will normally himself deny responsibility for these movements). You also find yourself able to utter words which can be heard anywhere, without moving any material objects. However, although you find yourself gaining these strange powers, you remain otherwise the same – capable of thinking, reasoning, and wanting, hoping and fearing. It might be said that you would have nothing to want, hope, or fear – but that is false. You might hope that these strange powers would remain yours or fear that men

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Cartesian souls and personal eschatology would dislike you. Even if you could control their thoughts you might want them to like you spontaneously without being forced to do so by you, and you might fear that this want would not be fulfilled. Your hopes would be natural aspirations uttered to yourself, and shown by feelings of joy and relief when they were fulfilled, and sorrow when they were not realized. You would think and reason as men often do in words uttered to yourself. Surely anyone can thus conceive of himself becoming an omnipresent spirit. So it seems logically possible that there be such a being.3

Richard Swinburne advances a story intended to show the coherence of God’s being an omnipresent spirit. While many would reject this picture of God as similar to humans, it does, minimally, provide a coherent picture of such a state of affairs whereby disembodied souls not only persist but also have distinct sensual experiences without their bodies. Additionally, Swinburne attempts to show that it is conceivable that disembodied persons could experience the physical world in a way not confined by spatial or physical constraints. Given the spatial boundaries provided by the body, there may be some reason to think that without those boundaries during the disembodied state one would not have such spatial and physical constraints. Having said this, it seems less than plausible on certain models of anthropology. Swinburne’s story seems most plausible on PSD and SC with relational souls, arguably, where they have no necessary connection to their bodies. In fact, disembodied souls, like an unembodied God, would be unhindered without the body. In fact, one might argue that the soul can function perfectly well, maybe even better without their bodies, in some crucial respects. Without their bodies, souls can experience the physical world unencumbered by physicality as suggested in the Swinburnian story. At most, bodies help or enhance sensual powers already obtained by pure and relational souls. CSD and EC with hybrid souls would seem to function less than favourably well without their bodies. Given the nature of hybrid souls, as I have defined them above, it would seem that the disembodied state would diminish certain powers respective of or naturally at home with the human soul. Specific powers and properties undergirding sensual experience would appear to be unrealised or severely diminished during the interim period of disembodiment. This does not mean that the person as substance would cease to be, but that the other teleo-functional properties, naturally at home with a soul that bears an essentially originative relation to its body, would lack sensual powers. Additionally, if we take it that the soul is functionally supervenient or dependent on the body, then other cognitive functions would, at a minimum, be handicapped in some form. In the end, this is not to say that the Swinburnian story is not coherent, just that all its features seem less than fully plausible concerning the hybrid soul, but it remains a conceivable state of affairs. It is just that the details of our disembodied experience remain ambiguous. CSD and ESDMO with kind souls seem even less than likely to provide an accounting for or naturally cohere with the Swinburnian story. On ESDMO,

Picturing the interim state as a Cartesian 157 where souls are kinds necessarily dependent on the body, the brain, and the nervous system for functionality and for coming into existence, it would seem that souls not only could not function without their bodies but that they might not continue to exist disembodied.

Is hylomorphism an alternative ontology, picture, and way to read scripture? In the above, I have argued that PSD/PBSD most naturally accounts for or offers the best metaphysical accounting for the Scriptural teaching on the intermediate state between somatic death and the physical resurrection. Thus, I have sought to underscore the importance of both the physical resurrection of the body along with the immortality of the soul – at least some minimalist understanding of immortality where souls can persist beyond bodily death in the afterlife. An alternative anthropology deserving attention here is called hylomorphism. This is the view following from Aristotelianism and often associated with Thomas Aquinas. According to Thomas on hylomorphism, the human being is a composite of both soul and body. Hence, a human comprises both soul and body. It is important to distinguish hylomorphism from other anthropologies relevant to the discussion. Normally hylomorphism is distinguished from the composite version of substance dualism I have advanced. I have suggested that PBSD fits with a form of composite substance dualism that is different from Aquinas’ hylomorphism, at least on most interpretations. Person-body dualism is the notion that human persons are essentially souls that are able to take on a body as a contingent part of the human person, and this based on teleological relations the human soul has to a particular body. This is distinct from hylomorphism. Hylomorphism is the notion that souls are forms of bodies such that the two concrete parts compose the individual human being. In fact, according to one standard account of hylomorphism the two necessarily comprise the human being. Christina van Dyke represents a traditional way of interpreting Thomas’ understanding of the soul in the afterlife. The view she endorses has traditionally been understood as a variant of substantive dualism, but not characteristically Cartesian in nature. She views the relation of the soul to the disembodied state within the afterlife as not sufficient for personhood. Thus, persons are not identical to their souls nor do they persist in light of the disembodied souls that compose them. Van Dyke advocates a Thomistic dualism often called ‘cessationism’ or ‘corruptionism.’4 There is one view that is a modified version of ‘cessationism’ that affirms that persons persist by degrees.5 Most Thomists, however, see survival as an absolute either or. For my purposes here, I will assume the more standard ‘cessationist’ view, given the intuitions about metaphysical simplicity and indivisibility. So while John F. Kennedy dies after being shot, his soul lives on in the afterlife between somatic death and somatic resurrection. But he himself does not persist. He only comes to exist again when he is reunited to his body. The alternative

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Thomistic dualist view has been called survivalism, which affirms that the person persists beyond somatic death. Van Dyke endorses a variant of Thomism, as soul persistence on the corruption of the human being, when addressing Thomas’s hylomorphism concerning the intermediate state and the resurrection, which is clearly distinctive from Cartesian views.6 She has recently developed a response to the problem of a surviving human by drawing from a close reading of Aquinas’ Summa Contra Gentiles IV 80–81. I consider van Dyke’s exposition of Aquinas and Aquinas’ response to the problem of the surviving human after somatic death, according to van Dyke’s understanding of Aquinas. According to van Dyke, Aquinas is clear that his view satisfies both the persistence of the soul and the physical resurrection. What is difficult to see is how this is the case given the notion that human beings are soul-body composites. She uses the illustration of David, for David to comprise a particular body and soul at the moment the body dies and the soul persists, David ceases to exist. The soul part that previously comprised David persists but David does not exist.7 If this is the case that David does not exist, then it seems impossible that he would come to exist again as strictly identical to David. Given a common understanding of natural objects, if a natural object goes out of existence then it cannot come into existence again as strictly the same numerically identical object. This is what philosophers call the principle of non-repeatability. The problem raised by the principle of non-repeatability clearly poses a problem for said Christian materialisms that wish to hold that human persons are material objects not to be confused with form-matter arrangements. On materialism, it is clear that a physically arranged object that consistently loses parts is always changing, but more importantly, if a material object ceases to exist then it loses its essence. Intuitively, then, there is no plausible way for this new material object, even if composed of overlapping parts with the old material object, to come into existence as numerically identical with the old material object, hence there is a problem for personal identity where we have two differing material objects and different persons.8 The principle of non-repeatability says that if an object/entity is reduced to its component elements, then it will not continue to exist as the same individual.9 In light of the normal workings of physical organisms, the non-repeatability of those same organisms is intuitive because we seem to have a new organism after it loses some of its component parts.10 Van Dyke proceeds to suggest that this principle is true, that Aquinas affirms as much, but a crucial distinction is important regarding human persons. van Dyke argues that Aquinas makes a distinction between artefacts and natural objects, which is important for this discussion. Aquinas argues that artefacts have accidental forms in contrast to natural objects. Natural objects are placed in a genera-species relationship according to their substantial forms while artefacts are placed in a relationship according to matter.11 Thus, the important difference pertaining to identity is that with artefacts the same entity

Picturing the interim state as a Cartesian 159 is present if the same matter and its accidental form are present, while the same natural thing is present if the same form is present. Aquinas is able, then, to affirm the principle of non-repeatability while affirming that the persisting human during the intermediate state exists in the relevant sense. In Aquinas’ view, it is in virtue of the soul that a part of the human persists. The soul is an immortal substance that serves as the substantial form of the body. The solution to the problem of the persistence of a numerically identical person obtains when the disembodied soul informs the resurrected body.12 It is in virtue of the immortal soul that Aquinas is able to make sense of the physical resurrection where persons can persist from somatic death, in the intermediate state, to the physical resurrection.13 As van Dyke makes clear, the notion of gappy existence does pose problems for materialist accounts of human nature but not for Aquinas’ hylomorphism. It is in virtue of the immortal soul that the important entity persists and accommodates the gap.14 Having said this, there is a drawback in affirming this particular anthropology for theological purposes. A Cartesian could, and ought to, argue that Aquinas is required to affirm a partitive notion of personal identity or no personal persistence whatsoever. While this seems intuitively difficult to grasp, and it seems to pose other problems regarding the gappy existence from the nonexistence of the complete person to the existence of the complete person, this is not my claim here. I suggest that this variation of hylomorphism encounters the implausibility of accounting for and/or capturing the data of Scripture discussed in the previous chapter. My general difficulty is how a Thomist, similar to van Dyke, could possibly account for the Scripture’s portrayal of the human soul as a person who thinks, has desires, has a relationship with God, and actively participates in the afterlife. Reading Paul’s letter to the Corinthians gives the impression that persons persist in the intermediate state and have conscious experiences of God. Furthermore, how are we to make sense of Aquinas’ understanding of the afterlife as either a kind of purgatory or beatific vision (an interpretation of 2 Corinthians 5, see above)? On such a view, the ontology seems insufficient to account for the data. First, hylomorphism is unable to capture Paul’s implicit language of an individualized person during the intermediate state. In Aquinas’ view, according to van Dyke, this is no longer a human being but a soul-part that previously composed the human being and will come to compose again the human being at the resurrection. Intuitively, it is difficult to make sense of what this form/soul is and can do in the intermediate state. If the soul/form is able to act, has intentional agency and moral agency, then how is it that we are not describing a person? The notion of person seems more fundamental to the notion of parts of persons. The intuition of a simple view of persons seems to emerge in this discussion.15 Second, hylomorphism is unable to account for an active purgation of the soul during the intermediate state if one were to affirm the doctrine of purgatory. If one were to affirm that persons are not perfect at the moment of somatic

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death, and the intermediate state is a time for the purgation of the soul’s corruption, then what is experiencing the purgation becomes rather important to one’s particular anthropology. Is it that the soul as a partitive person is passively receiving purgation? If this is the case, this seems to undermine a common sense view of how humans attain goodness or holiness through an activity of the will requiring intentional and personal agency. Third, Aquinas has interpreted the intermediate state; especially passages like 2 Corinthians 5, as a period where ‘saints’ experience the beatific vision. The difficulty that a defender of hylomorphism encounters is from a non-existent person. If the person is not present but her soul-part that previously composed her is, then what is actively encountering God? What is it that knows God? What is experiencing God? Is it an impersonalized soul-part that is having an encounter of God? It is difficult to make sense of this notion without invoking the notion of a person with personal and moral agency. Fourth, when considering van Dyke’s Thomistic variation in light of 2 Corinthians 5 (especially Thomas’ interpretation given above) there is an ensuing problem making this variation an implausible anthropological model accounting for the content of the passage. On the interpretation given for 2 Cor. 5, we have a positive view of the intermediate state where persons not only persist but do so with qualitative experiences of God. However, on this variation of Thomist persons, there appears a different picture that corresponds more closely the contemporary pessimistic view of the intermediate state. Commonly, the intermediate state is downplayed, viewed negatively, or dismissed altogether. Yet, on the interpretation I advanced in the previous chapter, personal persistence is a positive state for the saints. Van Dyke’s interpretation seems to comport with the common contemporary picture better because of the ontology she puts forth where persons or natures are composite objects of matter and form. On this view, we lack a picture of an experiencing entity. Instead it would seem to follow that the soul-part would be almost non-existent and non-functional. The person, during the intermediate state, is reduced to its impersonal part that merely awaits the resurrection. However, there is one variation of hylomorphism that could satisfy the difficulty of a non-existent person in the intermediate state that is a stronger form of substance dualism, but this is distinct from the Thomist option Christina van Dyke advances. It might be more accurate to call this variant of Thomism – Thomistic substance dualism – rather than hylomorphism because of the substantial nature of souls, which supply the sufficient organizing principles to prime matter. This variation of hylomorphic or Thomistic substance dualism says that persons are souls with intrinsic potency or matter, such that during the intermediate state the individual soul is just a person that is a composite of matter and form even without a complete bodily structure. This would mean that the person never really disconnects from all physicality at somatic death, but that at somatic death the person loses his body, which augments certain powers respective of persons and allows the person to flourish. I would suggest then, on this view, that a person persists through the intermediate state not

Picturing the interim state as a Cartesian 161 simply the soul-part that previously composed the person.16 This would then be one variation of ‘survivalism’ in contrast to ‘cessationism.’ Having said this, I see this more promising variation of hylomorphism/ Thomism as a variation of how I define PBSD and an anthropological option that is very close to Cartesianism. Cartesianism is, once again, that view whereby human persons (or persons simplicter) are identified with their souls or supervene on souls. It might be a stretch to articulate Thomist substance dualism as a version of Cartesianism. Yet, because of its rogue nature, it might be fair to call it a variant of deviant Cartesianism.17 Richard Swinburne, which may be surprising to some, interprets Aquinas along similar lines as Plato and Descartes where we have a person that is connected to a body.18 While one may not affirm hylomorphism because she does not see souls as spatial, physical-like, or as forms of bodies in the normal sense of the term, I do see this as a viable anthropology that is able to satisfy the desirables of the intermediate state. If one were to affirm some variety of hylomorphism and maintain a persisting person that is able to re-unite with his/her body at the resurrection, then he/she should adopt this Thomist variation. However, I suggest that Aristotelian hylomorphism or Thomist hylomorphism as defined by Christina van Dyke, and the tradition of ‘cessationism,’ does not capture the Scriptural teaching, and for that matter ecclesiastical tradition on the intermediate state. Thus, one ought to opt for PBSD. In a recent treatment of Thomist anthropology, Jeffrey E. Brower has criticized most ‘survivalist’ approaches and advanced a somewhat novel ‘survivalist’ view by distinguishing non-human survival and human survival.19 He argues that many survivalist views are not sufficiently or finely grained enough. Furthermore, he argues that because of the nature of humans on hylomorphism, when humans lose the material part they lose the kind-nature that they originally shared in – in virtue of the material part. Instead of being a human kind of soul, souls encounter a substantial change. In response, he advances a version of ‘human survival.’ Brower argues for a distinction between souls that lose their humanness at somatic death and souls that remain human at somatic death. He suggests that one ought to make a distinction between dispositional and non-dispositional views of humanity. In the context of talking about Christ, Brower lays out his novel theory. He states, In any case, it is clear that Aquinas thinks that Christ retains his human soul between death and resurrection, and hence that although Christ’s soul ceases to be united to his matter, it does not cease to be united to his person. He proceeds, All of this implies that even if Christ ceases to be human at death, he retains a natural disposition to be human. For, as we have seen, Aquinas

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Cartesian souls and personal eschatology thinks that human souls are, by nature, disposed to be united with matter. But, then, insofar as Christ possesses such a soul after death, he must himself be naturally disposed to be composed of a soul united with matter, and hence naturally disposed to be human. And this, in turn, implies that after death, Christ is not merely a divine person, but rather a divine person with a natural disposition to be human. Indeed, if we allow ourselves to use the term ‘human person’ in a broad sense to cover any person possesses such a natural disposition, we can say that even if Christ ceases to be a human being at death, he nonetheless survives as a human person.20

Later on he offers a useful definition of his novel definition of Thomist conception of natures. He says, ‘If x is essentially F, and F-ness is x’s primary nature, then x is non-contingently disposed to be F’ (and hence such that x cannot permanently cease to be F without ceasing to exist).21 In this way, Brower explains that his Thomist theory sufficiently accounts for the virtues of both ‘cessationism’ and ‘survivalism.’ Cessationism in that the human organism stops existing. Survivalism in that the human soul still exists with dispositions for matter. For additional details, I point the reader to Brower’s interesting discussion. Brower’s proposal is quite interesting and it would appear to satisfy the desiderata of a disembodied person persisting through the interim period. Some may criticize Brower for not accurately interpreting Aquinas or advance the worry that his solution does not sufficiently satisfy Thomistic human personhood, but that is not my concern here. My concern is that his definition of human survival does not seem to sufficiently distinguish his Thomist view with variants of Cartesianism that I have advanced thus far. If he were to sufficiently distinguish his Thomism from Cartesianism, then he would need to say more about the precise relationship the soul has to the body when embodied and when disembodied, relevant to the context in which he describes his solution of the interim state. As it stands, it seems to me, that most contemporary Cartesians and those substance dualists seeking to distance themselves from both Cartesianism and Thomism could affirm something like, or very close to, what Brower has advanced in that souls as kinds persist as human souls not simply any old souls (contrast these kinds with God or angel souls).

The disembodied challenge I have already discussed three pictures of what it might be like for a soul/person to persist during the interim period of disembodied existence. As clearly attested to in the contemporary literature, substance dualism, in some variety, is the best and most natural position to affirm as an accounting for the intermediate state data. Pure varieties of substance dualism seem to encounter fewer problems. However, if one were to affirm CSD or COSD (including Brower’s recent proposal and ESD), then these face a greater challenge. A defender of these views ought to provide a plausible story of what souls can do during the disembodied

Picturing the interim state as a Cartesian 163 state. These souls (as I have articulated them as kind souls or hybrid souls) require and depend on the body for functional activity. Yet, we know that during the interim state souls will be doing more than simply persisting. As I argued in the previous chapter, souls of saints will have a vision of God. In this way, Paul seems to describe these souls as experiencing God. It is clear then that souls will act, albeit in an abnormal manner. In Responsibility and Atonement, Richard Swinburne discusses the challenge of disembodied activity. While the reader may see this as in tension with his other writings where he affirms disembodied soul activity and experience, he is not unaware of this tension. As shown above, his intent is merely to provide a conceptual story that is coherent and could be an actuality. He lays out the challenge in the following, The soul may not be able to function without a body in the normal course of things, but God could give it a new body or keep it temporarily in being without a body. In considering now how a good God who seeks man’s eternal well-being in friendship with himself will deal with men of various kinds, I phrase the question (since their earthly bodies will be destroyed) in terms of how he will deal with souls of various kinds. A soul deprived of its body would, however, have no way of expressing itself or influencing the world, and no way of acquiring knowledge of it, an no instrument to give it the energy to organize its mental life. Of course, God could give to a soul new ways of expressing itself and acquiring knowledge and energy from some other source, to enable it so to act. But, as it is at the moment, many of the kinds of desires to act and beliefs about the world which we have acquired during our lives are of a kind naturally expressed and derived through bodily means – viz. many of our desires are desires to do things with our bodies, and many of our beliefs about objects are beliefs about how sensorily they look or feel, viz. about how they present themselves to eyes or hands. Human souls seem fitted for human bodies. For this reason alone I am inclined to accept the normal Christian view that God will give eventually to such souls as he keeps in being after death new bodies, and any continuing existence of the soul without a body is a temporary state.22 It is not entirely clear that souls will be incapable of acting and experiencing in a disembodied state, but it seems plausible that they might not. Minimally, however, the way in which souls do act and experience would be different from their previous state of embodiment. Normally, we act in and through and/or with our bodies. So to act without a body is not the norm. Swinburne does suggest an interesting line of thinking about the interim state/disembodied state. He suggests that God may temporarily give a soul a new body or new ways of acting and experiencing. Interestingly, for constructive purposes he states, ‘God could give to a soul new ways of expressing itself and acquiring knowledge and energy from some other source, to enable it so to act.’23 It is here that I think

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we can plausibly say something about these ‘new ways of acting and experiencing’ by tying it to our Christology.

Christological souls and the interim period I have suggested above in the chapter on Christology that the initial stage of our redemption is the incarnation. In this state, the Logos, the second person of the Trinity, becomes a human, thereby maintaining his divinity yet assuming humanity. In this way, Christ provides the ground of a new union for souls. Herein, I suggested that souls assume new properties, powers, and capabilities in virtue of their union with Christ and other saints. I argued that this works especially well with CSD where hybrid souls (see the discussion on emergentcreationism above) are independent substances that have a teleo-functional relationship or a dependent relation on their bodies and can exist in compound dynamic structures. Elsewhere, I advanced an analogy to bring this notion out more fully. I suggested that souls are like lightbulbs that require their insertion into a socket and that these souls can be tied to a larger set of lightbulbs, which themselves are tied to a source of energy. At redemption, souls are united to Christ similar to the way a branch might be grafted into the tree. This organic metaphor serves to show us how an individual thing (i.e. substance) can be intimately tied to or fused with another. On such a story, souls can assume other properties; powers, capabilities, and ways of acting that are otherwise new to the substance. The soul’s assumption of other properties would be derivative from other substances. So, it may be that souls do not assume their own personal hunk of matter, but a story can be told where they have ways of acting and experiencing disembodied. By God’s act of fusing souls to Christ, souls assume new accoutrements via Christ and via the other saints. Christ, and/or his body, becomes the source of energy by which souls can act and experience. Thus, souls may not have their own personal body to act with, but they can act through and with Christ’s body as a new corporate entity (i.e. compound structure). Couple this with the fact that human souls will exist in a non-corrupted environment without the corrupted bodily dispositions, then one has some promising reasons for thinking that souls will have new ways of acting and experiencing.

Notes 1 See Charles Taliaferro and Jill Evans, The Image In Mind: Theism, Naturalism and the Imagination (New York: Continuum Publishers, 2011), p. 24. 2 Drawn from Charles Taliaferro and Jill Evans, The Image in Mind, 185–186. See also W.D. Hart, The Engines of the Soul. 3 Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, revised ed. 1993), pp. 106–107. 4 Jeffrey E. Brower, Aquinas’s Ontology of the Material World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 280. Herein, Brower opts to use the term ‘cessationism’ against the use of ‘corruptionism’ because the latter term is ambiguous suggesting

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5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

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18 19 20 21 22 23

that the other view is not consistent with human corruption. There are others who affirm this view. See the following representative list: Patrick Toner, ‘Personhood and Death in St. Thomas Aquinas,’ History of Philosophy Quarterly, vol. 26 (2009), pp. 121–138. Christopher Brown, Aquinas and the Ship of Theseus: Solving Puzzles about Material Objects (London: Continuum, 2005), pp. 120–124. Jason T. Eberl, ‘The Metaphysics of Resurrection: Issues of Identity in Thomas Aquinas,’ Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, vol. 74 (2000), pp. 215–230. David Ordberg, ‘Survivalism, Corruptionism, and Mereology,’ European Journal of Philosophy of Religion, vol. 4/4 (2012), pp. 1–26. See Robert Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 380–393. Christina van Dyke, ‘Human Identity, Immanent Causal Relations, and the principle of non-repeatability: Thomas Aquinas on the Bodily Resurrection’, Religious Studies, vol. 43, no. 1 (2007), 373–394. Ibid. 374. Ibid. 374–375. See Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles IV, translated with an Introduction and notes by James F. Anderson (Notre Dame, Indiana: Notre Dame Press, 1975), 79. Here Aquinas develops the problem and his answer to it. Ibid. 377. See SCG IV, p. 80. Ibid. 378. Ibid. 379. Ibid. 382. David S. Ordberg has recently helped facilitate interpretive distinctions on Thomas’ view of persistence in his ‘Survivalism, Corruptionism, and Mereology,’ European Journal of Philosophy of Religion, vol. 4, no. 4 (Winter 2012), 1–26. See van Dyke, ‘Human Identity, Immanent Causal Relations, and the principle of non-repeatability: Thomas Aquinas on the Bodily Resurrection,’ p. 386. I defend this feature of persons in Chapter 2. A view like this has support from Moreland and Rae in Body and Soul. Nathan A. Jacobs also supports something like this in his ‘Are Created Spirits Composed of Matter and Form? A Defense of Pneumatic Hylomorphism’, in Philosophia Christi, vol. 14, no. 1 (2012), 79–108. See Oliver Crisp, Deviant Calvinism (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014). Herein, Crisp argues that there exists what he calls deviant, eccentric, and odd strands or teachings tied to the soteric system called Calvinism. I am reminded of this term ‘deviant’ from Crisp. See his Mind, Brain, and Free Will (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 170–173. Jeffrey E. Brower, Aquinas’s Ontology of the Material World, pp. 292–310. Brower, Aquinas’s Ontology of the Material World, 295. Ibid. 299. Richard Swinburne, Responsibility and Atonement (New York: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 179–180. Ibid.

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When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory.’ (1 Corinthians 15:54, NIV)

As previously argued, it appears that if there is a somatic death of the original body and the assumption of a new body, then personhood requires some plausible grounding for persistence. While it may be true that all the positions on origins outlined in Chapters 3 and 4 have the modal possibility of a surviving soul in virtue of the independent and distinct soul as substance, each view (barring creationist views) seems to have entailments given its view on origins that make affirming persistence a difficulty. If the particular view requires an arbitrary or ad-hoc solution to the problem of persistence, and one has a position that is naturally more satisfying, then one has reason to affirm the latter position instead of the former. I argue below that two positions, namely traducianism and ESDMO, will struggle to provide a plausible solution to this problem of the persisting soul in light of somatic death. This is not to deny that miracles are possible, but it may be unnatural given the position and its metaphysical entailments. Maximally, these positions run into an impossibility because even God cannot do the logically impossible. Minimally, these positions run into the probability of not being true because of the potentially divisible nature of the soul. The next criterion concerns the nature of the body as a significant part of human personhood, albeit non-essential to the existence of personhood. Both common sense and Christian theology support the significance of the body, as I have shown already, such that one ought to affirm a view that is commensurate with this and coherently accounts for the reality and significance of the body. Yet, it is not uncommon for objectors to raise this problem for substance dualism. Materialist critic of substance dualism, Joel Green, has persuasively argued for the notion that human life is an embodied life. In the context of critiquing views that identify persons with souls, Joel Green states that ‘for Paul, embodied existence is the norm.’1 Yet, most substance dualists, especially Christian dualists, affirm the truth that human life and existence is typically an embodied life, so no problem there. The difficulty for the theologian is

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providing an accounting for the proposition that souls are normally embodied, can persist during the interim period, and will likely exist again as embodied souls. An intimate and natural relationship between body and soul seems apparent in the pages of Scripture. A substance dualist position must support a robust relationship between the soul and body, and, support such a relationship that accounts for the significance of the body to the soul. Marc Cortez supports this by stating: Nearly everyone affirms that human persons are physical, embodied beings and that this is an important feature of God’s intended design for human life. Thus, most biblical terms such as “spirit,” “soul,” “body,” “flesh,” and the like, appear at first glance to refer to “parts” of the human person, they actually should be understood as referring to the human person as a whole, albeit from different perspective. Later, on the same page, Cortez concludes with the following: Thus, although we will see that there are important differences in how scholars understand the nuances of these terms and the biblical ontology that underlies their use, both Old Testament and New Testament scholars agree that the biblical texts focus primarily on the human person as a whole, psychophysical being.2 The contemporary theological literature has placed a premium on embodiment in response to views that have the potential for minimizing the significance of the body to human nature. Moreover, this is not without sufficient warrant given the Christian doctrine of creation, incarnation, and the resurrection.3 Yet, this does not mean the body is an essential part of human nature because this is not a necessary entailment from the Christian emphasis on the importance of the body.4 In the strict philosophical sense, this means the body must be a contingent part of human nature. While a Christian view of anthropology affirms both propositions, a clear tension emerges that deserves further reflection. In this section, I reflect on this tension and seek to provide a plausible accounting. I do so by analyzing the pertinent views and note the relevant virtues and vices of the views on origins. I conclude with an anthropology that naturally satisfies a close relationship between the soul and the body, the significance of the body, and maintains the possibility for a persisting soul. These taken together comprise an overarching frame of reference for concluding in favour of EC.

Traditional-creationist views of origins and the problem of kind-souls When considering traditional views as I have construed them in Chapters 3 and 4, it seems that SC may lack a natural connection between body and soul and on traducianism it is open to debate concerning the relation of body and soul. While SC is able to coherently accommodate evolutionary concerns, concerning

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the similarities of animal and human brains, there is not an obvious connection between the soul and the body in evolution, but this does not mean that these views are incoherent to affirm in conjunction with physical evolution. The reason for this is that the soul is not causally necessitated or contained within the physical. Thus, SC can account for physical event-causation within evolution by distinguishing the causal origins of bodies and souls. As shown above, this does not present incoherence against traditional views on origins, but they do lack the naturalness that seems to exist between the body and soul – according to empirical considerations. This may not be true of traducianism views if proponents of the view can provide a sufficient metaphysical relationship between the body and soul and soul’s generation being dependent on physical mechanisms, then it can avoid this problem. However, if it does this, then another danger seems to present itself related to Hasker’s ESDMO view.5

Rejecting traducianism and material generation of souls As seen above, a similarity is present for both traducianism (some variations) and ESDMO. First, proponents of both assume that souls are generated – yet the mechanism is different for each. Second, proponents of each affirm the close connection between all human persons and their parental progenitors. Third, proponents of each have the resources to account for modern scientific concerns – even evolution. With these benefits, affirming one of these positions comes at a cost. I raise two particular objections against both of these views, which I consider to be reasons for rejecting them and taking up one of the two versions of creationism. My first objection to both traducianism and ESDMO with materialist origins comes from the particular mechanism proposed for the soul coming into existence. On both views, something generates souls. The means by which the soul is generated on ESDMO is through a mechanistic physical process whereby the soul immediately comes to be based on a suitably complex neural structure. On variations of traducianism, the mechanism is similar in that when the physical substance with the appropriate immaterial parts reaches a certain level of complexity a human soul or human nature emerges. Additionally, some theories within traducianism posit that the soul just does have immaterial parts or has an immaterial concrete part that is fissile in nature that come to be dependent on the material biological process – possibly at gestation. In this way, both ESDMO and traducianism of this variety are similar in explaining how the soul comes into existence.6 While one can posit the mechanism for the soul’s origin as a virtue of the theory – as some have argued – it seems to those with creationist-intuitions that this is problematic. To this we turn. I, along with creationists, cannot see how a soul could come to exist through a material generative mechanism because of the radical distinctness between bodies/brains and souls. This is not to say that it is impossible, but that it is not conceivable. The burden of proof is on the defender of traducianism or ESDMO. In the view of many dualists, positing that the somatic part causally

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produces the soul is similar to saying that the soul is identical to or reducible to its subvenient base in the brain. However, this cannot be, for as we have already seen both the soul and the brain are vastly different in nature. This results in part from their modal properties and the divergence of the actual properties that each exemplifies.7 The soul can conceivably exist or persist without the body and the soul exemplifies properties of a qualitative and intrinsic sort that is uncharacteristic of bodies and brains. Body and soul are just radically different and a real distinction exists between the two, even if both comprise a complete human nature. Thus, to posit that the soul finds origins in the body/brain seems to ground the soul directly in the chasm between the two kinds of things, which seems problematic. This problem depends on a further intuition often shared among proponents of substance dualism, and it elucidates the problem. The intuition is that souls bear the property of ‘indivisibility.’8 As I argued earlier, I take the soul to be a simple without parts or as an immaterial thing the soul is indivisible. I have argued this based on knowledge by acquaintance, the simple argument, and a version of the knowledge argument. I suggested that direct knowledge of the self grounds the intuition and that persons presuppose the simple intuition in all other epistemic processes. I also suggested that the logic of conceivability and possibility ground this intuition. Assuming souls are simple and/or indivisible, then one has reason to reject both traducianism and ESDMO. Both traducianism and ESDMO are unable to provide a theoretical foundation for these intuitions, at least in terms of disembodiment. Proponents of each have the resources to affirm a strong and deep unity of the soul, but not simplicity or indivisibility (minimally, this is a prima-facie problem). Proponents of both views may propose that the internal relationship of all the essential properties of the individual soul unite to form a soul, but it is still conceivable that these parts/properties can be divided – hence falsified. The situation may be different on each view. For fissile traducians, it is possible that the soul ceases to exist given its ability to extrude – or at least this is conceivable. On a parturient variation of traducianism, the matter seems even more likely that the soul could divide into its component parts. On ESDMO, the soul would seem to cease existing on dissolution of the bodily or neural structure – furthermore, Hasker has argued that the soul has extension in space, which is further corroborating evidence that the soul is potentially divisible.9 Hasker may deny that the emergent soul is divisible because of his affirmation of the unity of consciousness, but it is difficult, at best, to square a thing that is non-simple and exists spatially with non-divisibility because a hallmark property of complex and spatial entities seems to be divisibility. All of these views may have a weak notion of simplicity in that souls are not reducible to their component parts – but this does not go far enough to support metaphysical simplicity or indivisibility. These two objections seem to me suitable grounds for rejecting these positions on origins of souls in favour of some version of creationism. This does not conclusively prove either version of creationism, but creationism is more plausible given these intuitions. There is at least one theological reason related to these

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philosophical intuitions from survival that undermines traducianism and ESDMO. It seems to me then that there is a metaphysical relation between origins and survival.10 Related to the above objection is an objection from origination and dependence. If the soul comes to be from a sufficient physical organism, then there is probable cause for believing those modal properties/qualities will reflect the soul. Thus, if the body comes to be and can cease to exist, so will the soul in virtue of its intimate dependence relation on the body. Yet, if the soul causally transcends the body and the properties it instantiates, then the soul cannot come directly from the body, but from another source. For the soul to originate in virtue of the body causing it would mean the soul would cease on the body ceasing to exist.11 The metaphysical story appears to be different on SC and EC (most versions of it) in that the soul may be weakly dependent on the body, functionally dependent on the body, requiring the body to begin functioning in the physical world, but not caused to exist by some entity that the soul metaphysically transcends. As such, a theological entailment seems to follow. If souls have extension, have divisible essential parts/properties, then the soul can cease existing on the dissolution of the body. This is not to say that the soul could possibly exist if God were to put specified conditions in place, but to say that this allows for the possibility of the soul’s cessation of existence. If this is true, then one has theological reasons for rejecting these positions.12 The reason for rejecting traducianism and ESDMO is on the grounds that these do not ‘naturally’ support the persistence of the soul from somatic death to the physical resurrection. As I argued in Chapters 2 and 3, the notion that the soul and personhood persist after somatic death is non-negotiable in terms of Scripture and in terms of ecclesiastical tradition. However, on ESD with materialist origins and traducianism it is probable that the soul will not persist or function because of its nature and origins apart from an ad-hoc Divine miracle as a metaphysical explanation.13 These are philosophical and theological reasons for affirming creationism, which comprise the ground for the creationist-intuition that the soul is unique.

SC or EC Traditional-creationism and emergent-creationism are able to satisfy the assumptions and intuitions given above and are supported by the arguments given in the first section regarding the metaphysically simple soul. I suggest that traditional-creationism and emergent-creationism are both philosophically and theologically satisfying, but they are not on equal footing. I raise one problem for SC, which should incline one to EC. The objection is from the ‘naturalness’ of the body as a significant part of the human substance.14 Christian thought supports the notion of the body’s significance and role concerning personhood, which I argued in Chapter 5. The body also seems an important part of salvation – given the incarnation of Christ, Christ’s somatic death, and the physical resurrection of human nature.15 Thus, the Christian

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who firmly stands in the history of Christian thought ought to reject any view that does not support the significance of the body. My argument is not that SC with PSD cannot account for the significance of the body. I believe both can. My argument is that one who assumes either view has difficulty accounting for the naturalness of the significance of the body in salvation and it is more natural to affirm EC in conjunction with the significance of the body to the soul. The criterion of naturalness in relation to organisms says that two parts unite or relate in virtue of overlapping shared properties.16 With simple or pure dualisms and SC there is not a sufficient unity relation – or at least those by which we have cognitive access. As with simple dualisms, there is a common belief that the person identified with a soul and is able to exist without need of the body. In fact, some versions of substance dualism suggest, implicitly or explicitly, that the body is a hindrance to the soul.17 It seems obvious to most that Christians ought to reject these versions of substance dualism. While the traditional or simple creationist can affirm the significance and value of the body, it lacks the natural advantages of EC. However, one way for a defender of SC to affirm the significance and value of the body is by affirming its brute value and its instrumental value in a broad virtue theory, but there remain some challenges.18 Once again, the problem from the naturalness relation between body and soul emerges.19 First, one could assert that God establishes a brute connection between body and soul, but not a natural relation.20 Second, and following from the last, there is no reason to suppose that souls are naturalkinds that naturally exist embodied on PSD and SC. Third, it may be that SC affirms a nihilistic view of the body whereby the body has no determinative essence. Thus, on SC of the body and soul relation there is not an obvious natural connection between the two, necessarily. The worry is apparently different on EC. On EC, it is apparent that the soul has a natural unity relation to its body, which requires that the soul have structure. Simple dualism and SC does not, in any obvious sense, bear the feature of having structure. This means that on EC the soul is not a blank slate, but has structure. In fact, the soul would seem to come with a set of necessary and essential properties. This structure would seem to be an in-built requirement for the soul to be ‘paired’ with a particular body. You might think that the soul has essential properties from the history of the body in virtue of its necessary beginning with the body. Connected to this, the soul seems to bear a necessary and essential relation to the parental progenitors of the body. This notion of a soul-structure would seem to mean that the soul has an integrated set of beliefs, memories, desires, perceptions, and emotions.21 Swinburne helpfully explains it this way: ‘I mean by claiming that the soul has a structure is very roughly that the determinants of change of belief and desire are in part soul-states, not mere brain-states; and that if body and soul were separated, some character would remain with the soul.’22 This seems more likely true when we speak of the soul coming into existence with a body and functionally dependent on that body. Whether or not there are pre-set beliefs and the like

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may or may not be, but there is a causally determined pre-set structure. When the soul bears the existence property, it has a causal connection to its designed body and a structure that pairs with the body. This notion of a structure finds support in our experience. When I attempt to undertake an action, it takes varying levels of effort. It may be that I have libertarian or contra-causal freedom, but this does not preclude the notion that some choices are more difficult than other choices.23 I may have grown up all my life to believe that a personal God does not exist because my parents inculcated in me to believe the natural world is a sufficient explanation for the causal activity of the world. Yet, later on in my life, I am presented with numerous objections to the notion that Nature, as an impersonal entity, is causally sufficient to account for states of affairs in the world. Upon seeing and understanding these objections, I find myself encountering an internal struggle with a deep-seated belief that a personal God does not exist. It seems that the same occurs with respect to our origins. It would seem that there are beliefs that a soul has immediately (possibly innately) regarding his nature as soul with a body. Furthermore, this notion that the soul has an internal structure suitably designed for a particular body seems to have empirical support from the notion of our causal activity. It seems true to say that free-choices are immaterial in nature. By this, I mean to say that when I choose to act I do so in terms of my mental activity. Having said this, bodies enable or weaken the ability to make certain choices. Consider when an alcoholic is attempting to break the habitual pattern of drinking. He may have the freedom to do so, but it will not be easy. His tryings or undertakings will be very difficult because he has a biological or conditioned disposition toward having a drink. Take another example from the desire to run on a regular basis. The one who has a high level of fitness has a much easier time trying to undertake the physical act of running because his body is disposed toward running – as a matter of fitness. By way of illustration, these two scenarios illustrate the reality that souls have a structure similar to and compatible with the particular body that the soul inhabits. Arguably, this requires that the soul and body have a pre-set structure that is suitable one for the other. This is so because both the body and soul influence the dispositional properties that inclines or dis-inclines one from running or from drinking alcohol. In this way, there seems to be an intimate dependence relation of the soul on the body, which seems to presuppose some sort of functional compatibility between the internal properties of the body and the internal properties of the soul. I say this because mental acts occur in a structure, not in isolation from it. In fact, we should think of choices as teleo-functional in nature in that all agents choosing have an end or a reason that is dependent on the functional integration of body and soul. Furthermore, these reasons are richly structured in a kind of existence that is dynamic in nature. Functionally speaking, then, the soul shapes the body and the body shapes the soul because both begin to exist with a pre-set structure where both are disposed to each other from their origination. Experience, then, undergirds the reason for thinking that the soul is naturally embodied.

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This soul would require the notion that souls are not generic, but are kinds (as I defined a hybrid of relational and kind souls in Chapters 1 and 5).24 Emergent-creationism (like ESDMO) seems to imply that souls are kinds because the soul begins to exist causally interactive with a body, dependent on the body, and gaining powers from the body. This would provide some support for thinking it is unnatural that human souls unite to ‘any old body.’ While in this view it is not impossible or completely inconceivable for a soul to inhabit a dog’s body, it is unnatural. It seems that there would necessarily be an interface problem between a human soul that is united to any ‘old body.’ Hence, the uniting of human souls with animal bodies – say a canine – would seem to be an issue of design. Furthermore, it is mysterious how this relationship between a human soul and a canine body would occur because a natural-kind means that the substantial thing belongs to a higher-order category from which it comes and shares with other substantial things. For a substantial thing, in this case a soul, to be a kind-soul would mean that it has a set of properties that overlap with or naturally interact with a body. Given the above, the human soul has a pre-set structure that is suitable for embodiment and finds good empirical support for the interactive natures of the body and the soul. SC offers no obvious resources for a natural or originative relationship between the soul and body. EC, on the contrary, offers a natural and originative relationship supported by experience and observable data. This notion of kind-souls also lends itself to the notion of souls having inner teleology that helps to understand the nature of the relationship between the body and soul, and to ground the significance of the body for the soul. This fits in a natural law perspective, whereby the soul finds expression, realization, and completion in terms of the body. One way to think about this is in terms of desires. Desires may begin in the soul, but find completion and actualization in relation to the physical body. This means that the soul is not simply a structure without teleology, but a structure with internal movement or direction toward the completion of the substance. Theologically speaking, this view supports the Christian view of the physical resurrection. Kind-souls provide a plausible explanatory ground for seeing souls as united to bodies.25 If it is the case that kind or hybrid souls provide such a ground, then it seems that in our glorified states we would have bodies. Bodies have a completive role in our natures as a human substance – broadly construed. How exactly the transformation will occur is unknown, but we have reason to think that in virtue of Christ’s conquering mortality and sin, the death of our physicality is put to death. The death of death would seem to causally bring about a full human nature in the glorified state. This notion of kind provides reason for thinking that God, in his moral goodness, will ensure our re-embodiment because the soul is able to actualize specified capacities that are significant to human nature (e.g. CSD where human nature is construed as a propertynature). The soul-body unity allows the human to live a full and flourishing life, but this does not tell us exactly what kind of body we will assume in the resurrected state.

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Following from the above, we can determine certain aspects about the body in our glorified resurrected states. First, we have reason to believe that it will be a human body because of the soul’s functional need of the body (assuming nature is not somehow subverted in the process of salvific transformation). Second, we have reason to believe that it will be causally connected to our earthly bodies on the basis of 1 Corinthians 15. In 1 Corinthians 15:44, we have an example whereby the body seems to change from ψυχικόν to πνευματικόν, which may indicate a substantial change from one body to the next because the former is translated as a natural body and the later is translated as a spiritual body. It may be that the bodies are substantially different, albeit causally connected. The important point here is that it is natural to read Paul as implicitly affirming an entity that binds the two bodies – I take this to be a soul. Ι say this not only on the grounds of other passages in Scripture that affirm the persisting self from somatic death to somatic resurrection, but also there seem to be other textual clues in the passage itself whereby Paul refers to the body as ‘it,’ then later in verses 50 on he addresses believers with personal pronouns as if there is a distinction between body and person yet a natural and intimate relation between the body and person. Third, we can affirm that it will be structurally identical to the pre-earthly body with new qualities that actualize and allow for a flourishing soul, yet it does not require that the body be numerically or qualitatively identical.26 On EC and PBSD, all that a human soul would require is a structurally similar or structurally identical body, but not a body that is numerically or strictly identical.27 Persistence through somatic death and the soul re-uniting to a qualitatively identical body suitable for hosting a human soul is required in such a view. What is important to highlight with the view advanced here in contrast to other substance dualist views, is the natural relationship that is affirmed between the body and person and the persistence of the person in relation to the distinct bodies borne out in Paul’s writings in 1 Corinthians 15. First Corinthians 15, on the relation of person and the resurrected body, is made sense of in terms of a person as a soul substance that has a body, and re-assumes a body at the resurrection.28 In this way, PBSD avoids the problems encountering other anthropologies. Other anthropologies have the difficulty of accounting for a causally continuous pre-death body and post-resurrection body and, by extension, the problem of affirming a numerically identical person. Defenders of PBSD have the advantage of affirming a numerically identical person because of the simple and enduring soul, and the defender has the resources to account for the causal continuity between the pre-death body and the post-resurrection body. In the end, PBSD has advantages worth further consideration, which are strengthened by one’s commitment to EC.

Highlights of PBSD and EC EC makes sense of the evolutionary connection of human bodies and brains with animal bodies and brains. It also provides some theoretical support to the

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notion that the soul is somehow dependent on the body, not simply for developing virtue, but for functioning in its best and most natural state. This view, then, has the following advantages over SC. First, it naturally supports the soul as a natural-kind. Second, following from this, the soul would seem to have a teleological relationship with the body. Third, EC can more naturally affirm the significance and value of the body by affirming a view of the body as a substance with an internal teleological structure that is suitable for hosting a human soul. Fourth, this establishes a more intimate connection between the body and soul, thus naturally supporting the empirical sciences.29 Finally, EC supports the notion that the soul ought to be re-united with the physical body in the resurrection after somatic death,30 whereas on SC and simple dualisms this implication that the soul be re-united to the body is not so obvious or natural. The soul on EC depends on the body for sensual access to the physical world and does not function properly without the body.31 I affirm a version of the mind-body relationship and a view on origins that is able to provide a theoretical foundation for the simple indivisible soul, therefore supporting creationist-intuitions, and a view that also allows for a more natural relationship between the body and soul – affirming what has been argued previously. Call this PBSD co-joined with EC, which provides support for the naturalness of personal embodiment prevalent in Christian tradition. It accommodates other dualist desiderata argued for in previous chapters that persons are strictly and essentially identified with the immaterial part, which is actually distinct from the body, and has the potential for a functioning disembodied existence. In the end, I have not provided a definitive case against SC, but I argue that EC or something akin to it is more likely to be true on theological and empirical grounds. The pure, simple, and traditional creationist may have doubts and raise scepticism about the prospects of such a kind of dualism because they may argue that a defender of EC cannot have that kind of access to souls and their nature. It seems to me on the empirical and experiential grounds given above, that we have good grounds for affirming the union of soul and body as a presupposed fact. On reflection, one can derive certain content from one’s experience as an embodied soul. The nature of our belief-desires, and freedom of the will it seems from the internal point of view that we necessarily have a pre-set determinate internal structure that is compatible with our bodies. This follows naturally from the view that our souls weakly supervene on, begin functioning with, and come into existence with the body. The relations of origins between the soul and the body provide the metaphysical accounting for empirical and experiential belief that the soul and body are actually united. By considering the variety of views on origins in relation to the empirical data, original sin, and survival, I have argued in favour of two conclusions. First, I have argued that these views are coherent given the desiderata and have distinct and interesting implications concerning theological anthropology. Second, I have argued in favour of EC as the most natural explanation for essential Christian data within an overarching Christian worldview (in terms of

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parts within the whole). EC provides a clear and coherent account of the theological desiderata within Christian anthropology. Additionally, EC offers some resources for a persuasive accounting of the Christian view of the relationship between body and soul. It provides a via media between materialist-like views and purer varieties of substance dualism. Where ESDMO and some versions of traducianism seem to have difficulty affirming the notion of a persisting soul from somatic death to somatic resurrection, defenders of creationism can avoid this problem. Alternatively, where more pure varieties of substance dualism lack a ‘natural’ relationship between body and soul suggested from the empirical data, the doctrine of original sin, and the intimate relationship between the soul and the pre-death body and postresurrection body, EC satisfies this natural relationship. While I have not attempted to refute the other views on origins nor make a definitive case for EC, I advanced a modest argument favouring CSD and EC as stronger alternatives within a broadly Cartesian ontology. This view provides the Christian with a view of human nature in the Plato‑Augustine‑Descartes tradition that is consistent with Christian teaching.

Notes 1 Joel Green, ‘A Re-examination of Human Nature in the Bible,’ in Whatever Happened to the Soul?, ed. by Brown, Murphy, and Maloney (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), p. 172. Joel Green makes numerous statements like these throughout his chapter, but the problem is that it is sufficiently vague because substance dualists (most, at least) affirm that embodiment is the natural habitat for human life and existence. What he needs to show is that, in Scripture, this is the only kind of existence for humans. 2 Marc Cortez, Theological Anthropology A Guide for the Perplexed, p. 70. Of course he moves on to reject outright the prospects of Cartesian dualism and idealism. This may be fair if he is taking these in a very narrow and caricatured sense, but seems far too quick for both can have a robust conception of the body – at least in terms of the body providing virtues for the soul. 3 Among other reasons, especially the empirical data from the physical sciences as discussed above. 4 Many Christian materialists speak in this manner and, as a result, are unable to provide a solution to the problem of bodies being essential to human nature and the reality of somatic death. Others speak of the resurrected body as being strictly the same body as the pre-somatic death body. Caroline Walker Bynum raises numerous problems for the relationship between the soul, person, and the body that amount to paradoxes or outright contradictions in her book, The Resurrection of the Body: in Western Christianity, 200–1336 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995). See Bynum on pages 177, 245, and the conclusion. She never offers solutions to these problems, but concludes with the problem. It seems to me that if she were to recognize the contingent nature of the body, then this would solve many of the supposed paradoxes. In certain places she identifies the person with the body and soul and speaks of the body as a necessary part of the person. Her discussion at times appears to be sufficiently vague. If she means that the body is essential and necessary for a flourishing human nature that is distinct from saying that the body is essential to the human person.

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5 Odo of Tournai is an exception offering an interesting hylomorphic-traducian view. He says that the soul can give off a particle (parturient) that flows from one soul like physical seed flows from the physical body. See Odo in On Original Sin and A Disputation with the Jew, Leo, Concerning The Advent of Christ, The Son of God, Two Theological Treatises, trans. by Irven M. Resnick (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994). See especially pages 70 and 71. The problem for this view is that it falls into the same problem that I raise in the next section where I argue these souls are divisible, which allows for the conceivable possibility that the soul will not persist from somatic death to the somatic resurrection. Oliver Crisp expounds on the hylomorphic-traducian view in his An American Augustinian, pp. 19–22. 6 A defender of traducianism could opt for a more ‘ideal’ cause of the individuation and origins of souls, but traducianism would still seem to require a dependence on body’s such that the body is necessary for the individualised soul. If not then this view is very mysterious than all the others. 7 I should say ‘seeming’ exemplified properties from science or empirically verifiable properties concerning material or physical bodies and brains and internal properties predicable of souls that are accessible by introspection. 8 This is a common view throughout Ecclesiastical history and many traducians seem to have affirmed this thesis, but it appears to be incoherent to affirm traducianism co-joined with indivisibility and/or simplicity. See Yates, ‘The Origin of the Soul,’ pp. 123–124. 9 See William Hasker, ‘Is Materialism Equivalent to Dualism?,’ in After Physicalism, ed. by Benedikt Paul Gocke (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012), p. 196. This is one place in which Hasker states explicitly that in his ESDMO view of soul the soul is not simple (in the Cartesian sense; not sure in which sense it might be simple) and is spatially located. 10 This is important for my purposes because the view of origins supports what I have said previously about origins and undergirds and buttresses what I take to be important desiderata concerning that nature of the soul in relation to the body, eschatologically speaking. 11 Thomas Aquinas has made this sort of argument. See Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 2. 68, 6, and 8. This would apply to ESD with material generation. Additionally, this would seem to apply to traducianism if the body/brain has a role to play in terms of causing the soul to exist. The reader, at this point, may still be unsure about the status of EC’s prospects concerning survival. While the soul bears an essential origin relation to a body, there is not a principled reason why the emergent-soul could not persist. These matters are logically distinct. Having said this, the soul will continue to bear a latent dispositional and first-order property to a body during the interim state. 12 It does not seem possible to affirm the simple soul or indivisibility in conjunction with Hasker’s ESD or Traducianism. See A.W. Argyle, ‘The Christian Doctrine of the Origin of the Soul,’ Scottish Journal of Theology, vol. 18 (1965), 290. 13 Yates directly roots the problem of survival in a Divine miracle instead of the internal properties of the soul. See Yates, ‘The Origin of the Soul,’ pp. 125 and 139. This denies it seems what one knows immediately about self, and the possibility of natural immortality. This does not undermine the Divine conservation of the soul’s existence, but instead as a creationist roots the soul’s nature and existence more directly in God. The opponent might argue that all views, barring a Platonist view of the soul, require an ad-hoc Divine explanation of the soul’s persistence beyond somatic death. It seems to me that this objection would be false if the soul is non-spatial, non-parturient, and non-fissile. If the soul did not bear these properties, then there is reason to believe that the soul would continue to exist in virtue of the internal properties of the soul. Plato held to more than natural immortality, he held to an essential immortality. By my saying that souls bear the property of natural immortality, I am

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Cartesian souls and personal eschatology not contending that the soul cannot cease to exist nor that God could not cause the cessation of the soul’s existence, but that given the soul’s internal properties it continues to persist naturally. This would seem to apply to the Origenist pre-existence theory of the soul. It seems that there is something about somatic death that procures justification for the Christian. Without going into the details of natural law in conjunction with the body, it seems that this a common assumption that requires a robust understanding of the body in relation to the soul. The Scriptural support includes Romans 6:3, 1 Cor. 15:3. When we partake in the Lord’s Supper we are partaking, symbolically or literally, in the death of Christ so that we can participate in his life in the physical resurrection. For an example of ‘naturalness’ see the following article on incommensurability. Oberheim, Eric and Hoyningen-Huene, Paul, ‘The Incommensurability of Scientific Theories,’ The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. by Edward N. Zalta, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2012/entries/incommensurability/ (Summer 2012; accessed on 14 April 2014). This may be true of Plato, and is widely accepted as a problem with Platonic substance dualism. See Charles Taliaferro, ‘The Virtues of Embodiment,’ in Philosophy, vol. 76, no. 295 (2001): 111–125. I suppose someone could argue that human nature is a contingent, albeit normal, property of souls, which might account for the naturalness criteria. The interaction problem would still remain, however. This is similar to what the ‘relation’ argued for between the soul and body according to John Foster, mentioned earlier, in ‘A Brief Defence of the Cartesian View.’ This is to say that souls have mental property-events not simply thinking or ‘conscious’ properties. Furthermore, if souls are kinds, then they could have teleological properties built into the structure of the soul. Swinburne, The Evolution of the Soul, p. 262. I became aware of this sort of argument by Frank C. Dilley, ‘Taking Consciousness Seriously: A Defence of Cartesian Dualism,’ International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, vol. 55, no. 3 (2004): 149. Bird, Alexander and Tobin, Emma, ‘Natural Kinds’, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. by Edward N. Zalta http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2010/ entries/natural-kinds/ (Winter 2012, accessed on 1 May 2014). In this useful article the authors describe natural kinds and offer a philosophical précis on them. A natural kind is a way of categorizing entities under a certain general heading. If the natural kind is a real kind, then this means that it is universal or a property of a set of cluster-related properties comprising a certain kind of entity or organism (i.e. science) that is exemplifiable in an entity that has a real internal relation or property that is shared among other entities that fall under that same kind. In this case we are speaking of human as a natural kind that is universally exemplifiable in all human persons that share this relationship, internally. If souls were generic but souls were identified with persons, then one would still have a paradigm that tied all souls together. This seems to be a contribution to the literature on the resurrection because it provides us a philosophical reason or a reason from nature for believing that we as humans will be physically resurrected. I do not see why this would be so in Christian materialism. This line of reasoning could be used in terms of Hasker’s ESD and variations of traducianism. This has been hotly debated throughout Ecclesiastical history, but its relevance seems of less importance if persons are not identical to bodies and are not essentially bodies. In fact, there are substantial philosophical reasons for doubting that a body could be strictly and numerical identical to its previous earthly body. Materialist

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Peter van Inwagen has difficulty with the notion that a body that literally dies could exist strictly and numerical identical again, thus he offers a different solution in ‘The Possibility of Resurrection,’ International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, vol. 9 (1978), 114–121. Bruce Reichenbach affirms this in Is Man the Phoenix? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), p. 182. Also see John W. Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 139–140. Cooper reads Paul in 1 Corinthians as suggesting that the two bodies may have similar properties, but not the same nature. This would seem to cohere with philosophical reasons for denying that the body will be strictly and numerically identical. He cites Robertson and Plummer and their helpful discussion on this matter in First Corinthians (Edinburgh: Clark, 1961), p. 368. In the end, if Ecclesiastical tradition and Scripture support a strict and numerical identity between the pre-death body and the resurrected body, this will not undermine most varieties of substance dualism concerning the person. This only seems to be of significance for materialism and personal identity because without the same body there will not be the same person. The point is that there is an added challenge for materialism. This issue has been hotly debated. When considering the most pertinent scriptural passage on the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15, it is unclear exactly what the body will be like in similarities and dis-similarities to pre-somatic death. Furthermore, I do not see how a resurrected body could be numerically or strictly identical with the body pre-somatic death. This does not mean that both bodies are not somehow causally connected. It seems that according to my view this stronger requirement is unnecessary when one has a persisting soul with a structure that persists through somatic death to somatic resurrection. Not all material entities seem to have the endurance of individual substances. In fact, I affirm that all things are not substances, but stuffs. While physical organisms are complex, they do not exemplify the properties characteristic of an individual soul as substance. This may make some sense in a broad Irenaeus soul-making theodicy, whereby the soul/person begins with a natural body, which is not originally corrupt but is weak and has the potential to change for better or for worse. In contrast, the spiritual body is more stable, fixed, and virtuous. It may be that mortality is built into the soul-body relationship, in the beginning, and bodily immortality follows from the process of redemption. This is a view commonly held in Orthodox teaching, but the passage could be read in a slightly different fashion or we may need to affirm a distinction between mortality and death whereby death still follows from sin (a reformed emphasis). This is an intriguing and natural way to read Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 that deserves more attention. My main point is that the soul provides the metaphysical explanation between ψυχικοσ to πνευματικοσ or the natural body and the supernatural or spiritual body. Not only does it provide a metaphysical explanation, but it provides an explanation or metaphysical ‘story’ that makes sense of redemption whereby the sin begins in the soul finds its completion in bodily death and salvation begins in the soul yet finds completion in the physical resurrection. This assumes that scientific realism is true. It may be that idealism with respect to reality is true, and, if so, then pure and simple varieties of substance dualism would not encounter the difficulties of the empirical sciences concerning a realist body. This would then provide the theoretical support for the rationality of the body needing to die literally and be raised anew without its previous imperfections. Even though the soul can exist disembodied and function to some degree, it will not do so naturally or with full capacity and power.

Conclusion

I began A Cartesian Exploration talking about souls and soils, which might seem like an odd place to begin. I show that there are parallels between the cultivation of good soil, planting, and the cultivation of theological anthropology utilizing personal ontology – specifically Cartesian ontology. My goal has been rather modest in that I explore Cartesianism as a coherent Christian ontology. I proposed Cartesianism as a viable ontological framework for theological anthropology. In the process, there was a need to till the soil of Cartesian anthropology to show that it in fact has some promising resources for theology. Furthermore, given the depressing picture of Cartesianism often portrayed, some work was needed to remove the bad soil from the good soil – in a manner of speaking. I have attempted to do both. While portraying Cartesianism in a more positive light along the way, I have raised some common caricatures and/or misunderstandings of Cartesianism with the intent to dispel those misconceptions, and, in fact, I have shown that Cartesianism is superior, in some respects, to alternative anthropologies. I have argued that Cartesianism, that is person-body substance dualism (PBSD), provides us with helpful resources to make sense of the biblical and theological desiderata. Along the way, I parsed out three variations of substance dualism for the purpose of clarifying Cartesianism – pure substance dualism, compound substance dualism, a species of pure dualism with a place for a compound human nature, and composite substance dualism. In the second part, I discussed theological anthropology and Creation via the soul’s origin by uniting substance dualism with the origin of the soul discussion. In this part, I offered four contributions to the literature. First, I advance the first contemporary theological defence and exploration of Cartesian ontology. Second, I drew from the philosophy of mind for the purpose of detailing options within the origin of the soul discussion. Third, I presented the concept of emergence as a novel way to parse out and resolve specific theological problems. Fourth, I expounded on a novel view, emergent-creationism. In what follows, I sum up my findings and lay out further lines of research. In the first part, I laid out some of the foundations for theology, generally, and theological anthropology, specifically. While additional work on substance dualism will continue in a philosophical context, very little relevant to the systematic theological discussions have been explored until now. Furthermore, I

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advanced some initial thoughts on the resources that Cartesian ontology has for natural theology and as a promising way to read and appropriate the biblical story line (thus accounting for desiderata 1), but additional research in these areas deserve the attention of philosophers, systematicians, and biblical scholars. In the second part, I constructively explored substance dualism in light of the soul’s origin – an area of theological enquiry common within Church history. However, I have merely established the boundaries as it is tied to Cartesianism. A contemporary treatment(s) on the origin of the soul is ripe given the work presently taking place in cognitive science, biology, and astrobiology at the intersection of theology (desiderata 5). Very little work from an analytic theology approach has addressed hamartiology and soteriology (desiderata 4 and 6), let alone a drawing from the variants of personal ontology. Such an area of study deserves not only the attention of philosophical-theologians but systematic theologians. In the present volume (Part III), I have scratched the surface. Finally, in Part IV, I have addressed various issues on the afterlife as they intersect with Cartesianism. I have motivated the discussion, but much more work is necessary to sufficiently assess the benefits of Cartesian physical resurrection (desiderata 3, 4, and 6). One question that remains, is the resurrected body really the same body as the pre-death body? If it is, then would this rule out Cartesianism as a viable model of anthropology or is there some sense in which the Cartesian could articulate a satisfying Christian view of the resurrected body? These questions must be taken up in another context. In A Cartesian Exploration, I intended to provide a starting point for issues concerning the relationship between substance dualism (i.e. Cartesianism) and theological anthropology. Given this, I did not address several topics in theological anthropology, namely human virtue, sexuality, gender, race, and free will, because of the project’s limited scope, all of which deserve careful attention from both philosophers and theologians. What I have done is to provide a foundation for addressing these other topics within theological anthropology from a dualist vantage point. Every doctrinal issue within theological anthropology intersects with human constitution, and deserves additional attention beyond what can be accomplished here. Furthermore, while I address both original sin and personal eschatology, I have by no means exhausted the topic; instead, I have merely addressed the topics in light of the soul’s origin. As such, human constitution, origins, and the various doctrinal loci deserve additional reflection. In keeping with the broader tradition of Christian thought, I am convinced that excising the soul as a theological category is the wrong way to approach theological anthropology, a trend popular in contemporary philosophy and theology. Instead, substance dualism, especially PBSD, provides a plausible accounting of contemporary Christian theology.1 Furthermore, in contrast to contemporary objections from embodiment, I have shown that contemporary substance dualism has a significant place for the somatic part of human nature.

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Now that the soil is ready and some of the plants have been planted, additional work of pruning and planting must follow.

Note 1 I believe theologians within Islam and Judaism could and should draw from the recent literature on substance dualism for construction.

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Index

Abraham, William 11 agency 10, 20, 21, 24, 29, 48, 74, 86, 159–160 Alexandrian 9 analytic theology 4, 11, 181, 184, 191 animalism 84 Aquinas, Thomas 9, 47, 69, 93, 94, 130, 136, 138, 140, 147, 148, 157, 158, 160, 165, 177 arguments (existence of God) 20–3, 64 arguments (soul): access 4, 10, 17–9, 22–3, 26–7, 30, 44, 50, 56, 60, 98, 107, 146, 175, 177; conceptual 26, 59; interim state 132–4; knowledge 24, 25, 26, 30; modal 27, 28, 154–64; phenomenology 19–20; privacy 56; simple 19–28, 26, 27, 28; unity of consciousness, 26, 28, 31, 41, 50, 161 Aristotle 3–4, 9, 12, 31 Aristotelian (soul) 84 Athanasius 13, 129, 137, 148 Augustine 4, 8–9, 13, 23, 36, 40, 49, 69, 72, 113, 121, 129, 133, 137 Augustinian/ Platonic (soul) 84 Baker, Lynne 41, 116, 183, 192 Baker, M.C. 51, 69, 71, 75, 115, 190, 193 Barnett, David 31 beatific vision 9, 94, 128, 131, 135–9, 153, 159–60 Beloff, John 12, 194 body theology 99–101 Brown, Warren 13, 113, 176 bundle theory 65 Burnell, Peter 32 Butler, Joseph 49 Calvin, John 4, 8, 9, 13, 34, 49, 55, 113, 114, 129, 144, 165, 184, 186 causal realism 58

cessationism 157–62 Chan, Jonathan vii, 50, 51, 130, 132, 184 Chappell, Timothy 29 Chisholm, Roderick 13, 15, 30 Christology 37–8, 48n.25, 126–8, 164 Churchland, Paul 102–3 composite (soul) 40, 41, 42, 43, 45, 46, 162 compound (soul) 40, 41, 42, 43, 45, 46, 126–8, 162–4 Cooper, John vii, 6, 12, 113, 132–3, 139–40, 143–6, 150, 179 Corcoran, Kevin 6, 12, 50, 71, 73, 91–2, 122–3, 140–3, 146, 149 Cortez, Marc 1, 5, 11–2, 101, 113, 115, 167, 176 creation ex nihilo 63–6, 68, 123 creationist objections 36, 101–7, 122 Crisp, Oliver vii, ix–x, 11, 50, 52, 72, 121, 130, 165, 177 Davies, Brian 30n.18 deviant Cartesianism 60, 63, 83–5, 161 divine–human analogies 19–20 dualist objections 1–2, 41–2, 57–8, 102–7, 140–3 dynamic 36, 38–9, 46n.3, 79, 80–5, 87, 162–4 embodiment 96–112 emergent creationism (variants) 76 epistemology: charity 18–9; critical trust 18–9; faith seeking understanding 7; phenomenal conservatism 7, 18–9; reformed 7; essentialism 65 Evans, Jill 164 Evans, Stephen 17–8, 38 evolution 77–8, 102–8, 109–12, 168–70 fertilization & soul 65–6 fissile (soul) 61–2

Index Flew, Antony 3, 12n.8 Foster, John 4, 6, 12, 30n.30, 44, 64, 71, 73–4 Gasser, Georg 12 George, Robert 84 God: creator 48, 55–6, 65, 87; dualism 21–3; immanent 23–4, 78–9; person 23–4; transcendent/alterity 23–4, 78–80 Goetz, Stewart 30, 49, 51, 69, 71, 75, 115 Green, Joel vii, 6, 13, 28, 49, 112, 114, 129, 146–7, 166, 176 Grimm 52 Harrison, Nonna Verna 46 Hart, W.D. 74, 154, 164 Hasker, William 31, 66–8, 108–12, 124–6, 168–70 Helm, Paul 13, 49 Hentschel, David 135–6, 138, 147–8 Hick, John 48 human–animal continuity 67–8, 106–8, 111 Hume 25, 39, 49, 57–8 hybrid (soul) 45, 162–4 hylomorphism 62, 72, 82–3, 86, 92, 94, 144, 146, 149, 157–61, 165 I–concept 18–20, 25–8 idealism 44 imagination/conceivability 153–64 Irenaeus 46n.7 Johnston, Mark 1 Kelly, J.N.D 9, 13 kind (soul) 45 Levering, Matthew 132, 137, 145, 148 lightbulb 127–8, 164 Lund, David 4, 12, 13, 29 McCall, Thomas 11 McFarland, Ian 13, 129 McInerny, Ralph 48 McNeil, John 13, 47 Menn, Stephen 13 Mental functioning: complex 18–21, 102; discriminatory 18–21; simple 17 mind–brain interaction 56–9, 66–8, 83, 103, 125–6 mind–body problem 56–9 Moreland, J.P. 6, 12, 22, 29, 65, 72, 74, 91, 93–4, 97, 113, 115, 145, 165, 176

197

Morris, Thomas 11 Mouw, Richard 33–4, 46 Murphy, Nancey 1, 6, 13, 41, 49, 50, 113, 137, 146, 149 natural criterion 86, 97, 102 natural theology 17, 19, 20–3, 25, 27–31 non–repeatability (principle) 158–60 Nyssa, Saint Gregory 17, 146, 150 occasionalism 70, 79, 89, 93 Olson, Eric 49, 50, 58, 71 Origen 69n.3, 129n.2, original sin 119–28 origins (soul): creationism 55–6, 60, 63–66, 105–6, 122–3, 156, 167–8, 170–4; emergent–creationism 76–90, 108–12, 124–6, 156, 170–6; emergent with material origins 60, 66–8, 105–112, 124, 156, 162, 168–70; traducianism 55–6, 60, 61–3, 120–2, 168–70 parturient (soul) 62 persistence: endurantism 25, 30n.23, 36, 125; perdurantism 30n.23, 125 personalism (Cartesian) 22–3 persons 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39; constitution theory 6, 31, 141; dynamic 34, 35, 89; likeness 34, 35; image 22, 34, 35; paradigm 21–3; restoration 37, 38; stable 34, 35, 36; transformation 37, 38 Planet of the Apes 39 Plato 1, 3–4, 8–9, 13, 29, 42, 46, 48–9, 73, 84, 90, 132, 146, 147, 177, 178 powers (soul) 85 primal sin 119–20 prolegomena 21–4, 39–46 pure (soul) 2, 4, 43–6, 51, 60, 97, 112, 122–3, 139–40, 146, 156–7, 171 Rea, Michael 11, 85, 94 realism (Augustinian) 120–2, 125–6 Reid, Thomas 49 relational (soul) 22, 33, 45 Robinson, Daniel 11, 13 Robinson, Howard 4, 12 Rozemond, Marleen 50 Ryle, Gilbert 50n.39 Smythies, John 12 soul 40–46; Aristotelian 84; Augustinian/ Platonic 84; cessationism 157–62; composite 40, 41, 42, 43, 45, 46, 162; compound 40, 41, 42, 43, 45, 46, 126–8,

198

Index

162–4; dynamic 36, 38–9, 46, 79, 80–5, 87, 162–4; fissile 61–2; hybrid 45, 162–4; kind 45; parturient 62; powers 85; pure 2, 4, 43–6, 51, 60, 97, 112, 122–3, 139–40, 146, 156–7, 171; relational 22, 33, 45; spatial extension 19; survivalism 157–62 soul–making 48, 174 spatial extension 19 Stump, Eleonore 29, 81, 91–4 substrata 65 supernaturalism 26 survivalism 157–62 Swinburne, Richard 30, 41, 42, 43, 50, 51, 70–2, 92–3, 105–6, 111, 115, 130–1, 145–6, 148, 155–6, 161, 163–5, 171, 178 Taliaferro, Charles vii, 4–6, 12, 49, 51–2, 96, 130, 145, 149, 154, 164, 178 Tanner, Kathryn 47, 80, 91–2

teleo–functional (properties) 83, 89, 102, 107–8, 128, 147, 156, 164, 172 transmission problem 119–20 trinity: latin and western 20–1; relational ontology 11, 33, 100, 127, 164; scripture (theological interpretation) 7, 24, 32–9, 98–101, 131–40, 158–60, 166–7, 173–4; personal ontology (use) 134–5 Thomist causation 80, 83 Thomist emergence 84–5 van Inwagen, Peter 12n.11, 29n.12, 50n.43, 71n.23, 112n.4, 150n.62, 179n.26 Walls, Jerry 33–4 Webb, Stephen 29 Wright, N.T. 6, 135, 139, 144, 147–9 Zimmerman, Dean 12n.11, 29n.12, 50n.43, 70n.16, 71n.22–23, 74n.66, 75n.69, 112n.4