Christian Physicalism ?
What does it mean to be a human? What are humans? Are they souls, souls and bodies, or merely bodies and brains? These and other questions still confront us today. And these questions connect us to a longstanding tradition of reflection on what it means to be human. However, the dialectic has changed quite significantly from the belief that we arc or have souls to the belief that we are wholly physical in nature. Such a change has impacted our perception not only on w hat it means to be human, but, to what extent we are connected to the animal kingdom and our profound connection to robots as seen in the growing transhumanist literature. With all that has changed in the developing portrait of humanity, there is something often missing in the anthropological discussions only theology can satisfy. Based on what follows, we are convinced that physicalism has very little support and that Christians should resist the trend to mold Christianity into its frame.
We take this one step further. We liken the recent attempts to bring Christianity and physicalism together to reflect the larger recalcitrant narrative characterizing the physicalism literature.1 As children sometimes develop blind spots to the truth due to stubborn refusal to heed the parent’s instruction, so it is with the physicalist. Characteristic of the physicalist literature is a stubborn refusal to carefully attend to the reality that there is more to the world than meets the physical eye. So it is with Christian Physicalism.
A BRIEF STATE OF THE ART: WHY PHYSICALISM FAILS?
Having advanced throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first century, wholly physicalist accounts of human persons today are dominant within contemporary philosophy of mind. From Gilbert Ryle to Jacgwon Kim, physicalists agree that no explanations of mental phenomena require appeal to any nonphysical substance. Beyond this general agreement though a bevy of views are on offer, with versions of the constitution view and animalism gaining in popularity today. Within this context, especially within the past twenty-five years, there has appeared a growing body of literature arguing for the confluence of wholly materialist ontologies of human persons and Christian theological commitments.2
While the influence of Christian physicalism has increased in recent years, it does not at present dominate as the assumed ontology in biblical studies or theology. In some circles of biblical scholarship, especially in the literature on critical biblical studies, there is a common belief that some form of monism (often conflated with materialism) is the teaching of Scripture, or, at a minimum, the teaching that the collective voice of the Scriptural authors yields. We are seeing theologians who are not tightly bound to the catholic, Nicene tradition move in the direction of monism, if not materialism.’ However, this is out of sync with the Church’s recognition of the soul's persistence between somatic death and somatic resurrection. The dogmatic teaching of the Catholic Nicene tradition reflects the collective agreement of theological authorities that affirm with one voice the doctrine of the soul (that is, as an immaterial substance, or something near it) that has the possibility of persisting disembodied during the interim state.4 Buttressed by the belief that Christ persisted as a human on Holy Saturday, it is arguable that he models what will occur for humans who die somatically prior to the somatic resurrection. While uncharacteristic of the Catholic Nicene tradition, many Roman Catholic, as well as reformed Catholics or Catholic reformed Christians, are moving in the direction of affirming some sort of monistic anthropology and rejecting dualistic anthropologies, especially as theological interpreters denounce the doctrine of the interim state between somatic death and somatic resurrection.5
In fact, it has been argued quite vigorously that the rejection of the interim disembodied state is a rejection of what is the natural and/or common interpretation of Scripture, evident in the Catholic Church. John Cooper points this out as a summary of his research:
The historic position seems to be the most natural interpretation of the biblical text in its historical context. Scripture has been understood that way in ecumenical Christianity since the early church. It not only affirms the biblical emphasis on the unity of human life, but also accounts for its two-stage eschatology— personal existence between death and resurrection. It takes the biblical perspective as the framework for philosophical and scientific reflection on the human constitution. In addition, this anthropology shares with most of the world's religions the belief that embodiment is not necessary for the soul or consciousness—Islam, Hinduism. Buddhism, animism, and popular deism.6
Such a view, what Cooper calls two-stage eschatology, wherein the soul persists between death and resurrection, is a fixture in historic Catholic Christianity (found in all three traditions) and reflects the belief in a soul, or consciousness. as distinct from materiality, in all the major religions of the world.
Reflecting the tendency to downplay the soul, substantial dualisms, and the other-worldly message of the Bible, it is not uncommon to read biblical scholars elevating the this-wordly message over the other-worldly message with its attending reticence to affirm the doctrine of a soul. Famous and regarded biblical scholar N. T. Wright reflects this sort of trend to hold off commitment to the doctrine of the soul. While Wright affirms the two-stage eschatology countenanced so rigorously by John Cooper, Matthew Levering, and others, Wright is also reluctant to affirm the logical entailment that the doctrine of the intermediate state yields some kind of substantive dualism (where the soul is, at a minimum, separable as a substance weakly construed).7 It seems the reticence is motivated by the desire to avoid any association with ancient dualisms or the nasty denigration of the body so commonly perceived in Cartesian dualism rather than a positive reason to affirm its denial.8
However, one need not affirm the two-stage eschatology to affirm the need for the soul and reject the doctrine of materialism. As seen in the pages that follow, one could affirm the need for a soul as that part that unifies the disparate material parts and binds them together in such a way as to allow' for consciousness. Rather than affirm two-stage eschatology, one could affirm an immediate resurrection view, all the while still holding firm to the need for an immaterial part. This is seen in J. T. Turner’s chapter in the pages that follow. While immediate resurrection has been commonplace for Christian materialists, and there are obvious motivations for a materialist to affirm immediate resurrection. Turner makes it clear that one need not be a materialist to affirm immediate resurrection.
A part of the trend away from variations of dualism toward materialism and/or monism has to do with the preposterous cluster of beliefs in the success of the physical sciences coupled with the belief that the scientific community assumes a physicalist worldview—whereby the world can be explained by biological and/or physical causes and effects. Theologies dominated by the biological sciences or brain sciences often reflect what so often dominates the scientific community, namely, the commitment to naturalism. Yet naturalism has no firm situation in a worldview presupposing supernatural agents and events (as in Christianity)?
Some theologians have bought into some, or many, of the trends and assumptions typically characteristic of the scientific community.10 Taking her cues from the supposed scientific consensus on human nature, theologian Susan A. Ross constructively takes up Philip Clayton’s emergentism as a way to avoid the challenges to theological views of humans. She says.
“Philosophical and especially theological understandings, to the extent that they are grounded in some nonphysical basis for the human, such as rationality or the soul, no longer have any credibility, at least for some scientists, in an era when we are increasingly able to take the measure of the whole person with observable data.”11 In the context of discussing neuroscience and its compatibility with religion and the soul, Aku Visala rejects a strictly naturalistic worldview' and shows the compatibility neuroscience has with the soul and its relation to God. He states,
Most theological anthropologies have maintained that humans are naturally and essentially open to non-natural realities, revelation, or the experience of God. Traditionally, John Calvin and Thomas Aquinas, for instance, maintained that humans have something like a basic, natural ability to know' God. Paul Tillich. Karl Rahner and Wolfhart Pannenberg attempted to flesh out the implication of this w ith tools they often derived from European philosophies of their time. Similarly, late nineteenth century' and early twentieth century theories in religious studies and sociology of religion emphasized universal religious experience and the fundamental social nature of religion, respectively. Some contemporary theologians, such as Robert Jenson and J. Wentzel van Huyssteen, have emphasized the close links between the emergence of religion, humanity, and ritual behavior. All these converging threads seem to point in the direction of religion and religiousness being deeply ingrained into human nature and human beings.12
Similarly, philosopher of psychology Daniel N. Robinson pushes against any physicalist attempt to naturalize religion in human nature. He states.
Moreover, the biographical facts gleaned from the lives of persons of faith scarcely support the generalization that religion yields a calm and comforting perspective on oneself and one’s world. Even expressing such a qualification grants too much explanatory power to what are finally neurochemical and neuroelectrical events in brain tissue. The brain has no motives and seeks no solace. That actual persons—possessed of brains and other anatomical structures—are, indeed, motivated and do, indeed, strive to find deeper meaning in an otherwise indifferent cosmos is beyond dispute. That such motives and longings are somehow' enabled by the brain should be readily granted but not as a fact that would give the motives and longings to the brain or locate them in the brain. Such inferences might well trigger activity in the anterior cingulate cortex in any creature expecting propositions to be meaningful.13
The sciences, however, are not beholden to a physicalist ontology as the following chapters make clear. In fact, the sciences are inadequately assessed without self-awareness, something we suggest is rooted in an immaterial substance. The commitment to science does not necessitate a commitment to naturalism or the influence of naturalism and its effects on theology.
One common motivation in the biblical and theological literature toward a belief in materialism as the assumed ontological stance of the interpreter is the belief that the Scriptures yield a portrait of humans as unified, functionally integrated agents. Pushing against the Hellenistic influence of the Patristic and Medieval interpreters of Scripture, there has been a sense that ancient dualisms imposed an illicit or inappropriate dualism of parts that fractured the image of humanity rather than providing support for the unified picture found in the Bible.14 Not uncommon to Old Testament scholarship is the assumption that humans are functionally integrated agents representing their creator. In fact, some Old Testament interpreters have taken this to mean that the Old Testament authors assume a monistic anthropology.15 There are two important items worth noting about how this reasoning has gone wrong. First, it is important to note that while there is a common assumption that monism is synonymous with materialism, this is just simply not true. There are other variations of monism that fall outside of the materialist camp.16 Second, it is worth noting that the Old Testament docs not clearly yield a teaching of monism but rather functional holism. It is important to make this distinction because functional holism is a term representing the integrity of the human (contra some ancient dualisms) in practice as image bearers of God, but it does not necessitate ontological holism (i.e., monism). John Cooper has rigorously argued in several places against the monist assumption so often smuggled into biblical studies, and by default into theological studies.17
To date, the most substantive contributions to the Christian physicalist literature have come from philosophers, although key figures also include biblical and theological scholars. Nancey Murphy, herself a nonreductive physicalist, has taken perhaps the most overtly theological approach to Christian physicalism. In her “Human Nature: Historical, Scientific, and Religious Issues," Murphy argues that the history of theological anthropology has brought us to a point of decision between nonreductive physicalism and holistic dualism, substance dualism (which Murphy labels “radical dualism”) being dismissed as not “compatible with Christian teaching.”18 Murphy's 2006 work. Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies?, is a sustained argument that physicalism—over against dualism—provides the best fit with Christian commitments.19 Warren Brown, though a neuroscientist and not a theologian, takes an approach similar to that of Murphy. Though not strictly speaking a work of Christian physicalism, Murphy and Brown's cowritten Did My Neurons Make Me Do It? Philosophical and Neurobiological Perspectives on Moral Responsibility and Free Will makes a case for how physicalists might preserve the notions of rationality, meaning, moral responsibility, and free will.20 In his 2012 book. The Physical Nature of Christian Life: Neuroscience, Psychology, and the Church (cowritten with Brad Strawn), Brown rejects dualism (which, it is maintained, leads to Gnosticism) and reconsiders such theological matters as spiritual formation and the mission of the Church in physicalist terms.21 Joel Green (a professor of New Testament studies) stands out among biblical scholars for his attempts to defend physicalist readings of Scripture, most notably in his Body, Soul, and Human Life: The Nature of Humanity in the Bible, by claiming that the exegetical task must be carried out with the neurosciences fully in view.22 Green’s “neuro-hermeneutic” is deployed to significant theological consequence in his work, notably in undercutting “the presumption of the centrality to biblical eschatology of a disembodied intermediate state.”23
Among philosophers, the contributions of Lynne Rudder Baker have outstripped those of her fellow Christian physicalists. Beginning with her 1995 article “Need a Christian be a Mind/Body Dualist,” Baker has argued “that what we now know about nature renders untenable the idea of a human person as consisting, even in part, of an immaterial soul.”24 Defending instead a version of the constitution view, Baker argues in Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View that one is a human in virtue of being constituted by a human body and one is a person in virtue (essentially) of having the capacity for the first-person perspective.25 Christian physicalists tend to view the Christian doctrine of resurrection as a test case. Baker applies her constitution view to that doctrine in her 2001 article “Material Persons and the Doctrine of Resurrection”26 as well as her 2007 article “Persons and the Metaphysics of Resurrection,” w'herein she argues the persistence conditions of the constitution view, according to which “sameness of pre- and postmortem person is sameness of first-person perspective,” make constitution the most attractive option for Christians.27 Kevin Corcoran also advocates the constitution view in his Rethinking Human Nature: A Christian Materialist Alternative to the Soul28 and his edited 2001 volume, Soul, Body, and Survival: Essays on the Metaphysics of Human Persons, remains among the most frequently cited works in the literature.29
Peter van Inwagen and Trenton Merricks have made notable contributions to the Christian physicalist literature, each endorsing the animalist view of human persons. As early as 1978, van Inwagen (characteristically) claimed to “have no idea” what sort of object is a “body,” arguing that upon death God may well replace one’s corpse (or at least the “core person”) with a simulacrum in order to preserve one for future resurrection.30 Later, in his “Dualism and Materialism: Jerusalem and Athens?,” van Inwagen fortifies this position.31 Offering physicalist-friendly readings of key biblical and creedal passages, van Inwagen seeks to decouple Christians from (their traditional) commitment to dualism. Doubtlessly van lnwagen’s most momentous contribution, though, is his 2007 article “A Materialist Ontology of the Human Person,” in which he rejects property dualism.32 Trenton Merricks is well-known for denying there are any criteria for identity over time," yet he insists on the resurrection of one’s numerically identical body: “if you are not numerically identical with a person who exists in Heaven in the distant future, then you do not have immortality—so bodily identity is crucial to resurrection.”34 By his lights, physicalism can make the best sense of this, for "life after death and resurrection are, for physical organisms like us, one and the same thing”35 Merricks’s “How to Live Forever without Saving Your Soul: Physicalism and Immortality" focuses on the challenge(s) presented to his view by the fact that upon death human persons cease to exist and there is a temporal gap before their resurrection.36 Any plausible personal ontology for Christian theology must also be coherently worked out with the essentials of Christian doctrine. Christian physicalists must attend to the full scope of doctrine in order to motivate a plausible defense for their view (e.g., sin, original sin, knowledge of God, salvation, sanctification). In what follows, the authors have attempted to explore some of these topics with physicalism in mind. The results are less than positive.
Despite reports to the contrary, the success of physicalism is overstated. The preponderance of evidence from Christian sources, rather than favoring physicalism, support some version of dualism with a view that an immaterial part is necessary to ground central Christian teachings.
CONCLUSION
What you have in your hands is a set of critiques against physicalism, generally, and the supposed compatibility of Christianity with physicalism, specifically. The integration of Christianity with physicalism has gained some prominence in recent years, as seen above. It is most evident in the philosophical literature, which includes the Christian philosophy of religion, but the impact of physicalism reverberates in biblical studies and theology, in some circles more than others. This is due in part to the overwhelming success of the sciences and the attending belief that science sits firmly in a physicalist worldview, where events are explicable by their underlying physical causes and effects or that organisms find their explanation in biological evolution. Another practical consideration is the common belief that dualism’s effect on theology tends to bifurcate the person and denigrate the body. This is something we are loath to do. as reflected in virtually all contemporary Christian dualist defenses of human nature.
This trend toward physicalism is unhelpful and unmotivated, in our assessment. As shown here and in the chapters that follow', we are convinced that the motivations to affirm physicalism are actually quite thin and baseless. Christians who are committed to Nicene Catholic Christianity are nearly compelled to believe in the doctrine of the soul, however one may work that out (for example, as a hylomorphist, a Thomist, a Cartesian, a Berkeleyan). Short of calling Christian materialism a heresy, it is a deviation from the received wisdom of ecumenical Christianity. The Church has made plain the near universal agreement that some doctrine of immateriality is central to our confession of the anthropos.
Some Christians may not feel the compulsion to stand so close to the received ecumenical tradition of Christianity reflected in its three expressions (e.g., EO, RC, and Protestant Christianity). Let’s assume one’s theological method basically reduces to biblical exegesis and philosophical reasoning with a nod to the tradition. Even still, the present resource has something to contribute to these Christians. There remain good biblical reasons for rejecting physicalism, for instance, the need to account for the self-same person identified throughout salvation history and enduring from somatic death into immediate somatic resurrection. Even more, there remain overwhelming philosophical reasons for rejecting physicalism on the basis that it cannot account for the unity of consciousness (see J. P. Moreland’s chapter), the enduring self, or the epistemology of religious experience (sec Angus Menuge’s chapter), among other theological considerations (such as the fact of Holy Saturday and Christ’s persistence with human nature intact).
Here is a question for the reader: does even science favor physicalism? We have suggested some reasons above that it does not. Furthermore, if one of the hallmarks of physicalism is its underlying basis in physics, then, according to Bruce Gordon, physicalists don't even have physics on their side. If he is right, then physicalists lack any ground on which to stand. In the end, one may conclude that there are no good reasons to affirm physicalism. This is our conclusion. What is yours?
NOTES
1. J. P. Moreland helpfully uses this term to describe the physicalism movement in his. The Recalcitrant Imago Dei: Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism (London: SCM Press, 2009).
2. For our purposes here, we use the terms “physicalism” and “materialism” interchangeably. This usage is not uncommon in the contemporary philosophy of mind literature. We recognize that some might want to distinguish the two terms. For example, if one is a Berkeleyan idealist, then one might refer to the physical as phenomenological products of the mind, yet use the term materialism to reference physical substantial ontology.
3. Michael Welker, The Depth of the Human Person: A Multidisciplinary Approach (Grand Rapids. MI: Eerdmans, 2014). In this multiauthored and multidisciplinary work, the authors collectively represent some of the trends toward some variant of monism, or the move to what might be considered a pluralist ontology. However, the authors, collectively, are quite disparaging of both reductive materialism or substantial dualisms. Otherwise, an excellent collection of essays.
4. Sec Matthew Levering. Jesus ami the Demise of Death: Resurrection, Afterlife, ami the Fate of the Christian (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2012), 15-27. In fact, the separation of body and soul has been the dominant theological interpretation throughout Church history. This is reflected, for example, in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (Mahwah. NJ: Paulist Press. 1994). The argument may be that this is simply reflective of the Roman Catholic teaching, but it is important to note that EOs do not depart from this, as shown by Levering, and Reformed Christians did not often depart from RC on these standard interpretations of Scripture.
5. See Stephen Yates, Between Death ami Resurrection: A Critical Response to Recent Catholic Debate Concerning the Intermediate State (New York: Bloomsbury. 2017). In this impressive study in analytic theology, Stephen Yates critically assesses the recent moves away from what is considered a dogmatic teaching of Roman Catholicism in the disembodied intermediate state to the affirmation of “immediate resurrection” view of the afterlife. He notes the correlation between the assumption of materialism and/or monism and the assumption of the immediate resurrection position and the resultant rejection of both disembodied intermediate state view with the rejection of the doctrine of the soul. He finds these moves problematic on dogmatic, theological, and biblical grounds and seeks to remotivate a case for the traditional dogmatic view of the soul’s persistence disembodied during the intermediate state upon somatic death to somatic resurrection. While Yates is focused on contemporary Roman Catholic theology, his findings are relevant both to Eastern Orthodoxy and Reformed Christianity because of the emphasis on traditional theological teaching, which is collectively agreed upon in all three traditions. He also notes some of the trends reflected in Reformed Christianity toward monism and away from dualism.
6. See John Cooper, “Scripture and Philosophy on the Unity of Body and Soul,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Theological Anthropology, eds. Joshua R. Farris and Charles Taliaferro (Farnham, UK: Ashgate. 2015), 39.
7. 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.” htlp://ntwrightpage. com/2016/07/12/mind-spirit-soul-and-body/ [accessed on August 31, 2017].
8. For a positive defense and construction of substance dualism generally and Cartesianism, specifically, sec Joshua R. Farris, The Soul of Theological Anthropology: A Cartesian Exploration (New York: Routledge, 2017). Farris advances the first constructive theological account of Cartesianism in the literature that is motivated by Scripture, dogma, and philosophical considerations.
9. “Scripture and Philosophy on the Unity of Body and Soul.” 37. John Cooper carefully pushes this point.
10. See for example Malcolm Jeeves, ed.. From Cells to Souls and Beyond: Changing Portraits of Human Mature (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004). Taking their cues from what is considered the scientific consensus about the overwhelming shift toward a neurological and biological basis for human nature, the authors affirm cither nonreductive physicalism or dual-aspectism. The doctrine of the soul or some version of substantial dualism is largely rejected (see page xii).
11. Susan A. Ross, Anthropology, Engaging Theology: Catholic Perspectives (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2012), 145. Also see Hans Schwarz, The Human Being: A Theological Anthropology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013). 127. Theologian Hans Schwarz recognizes the common views of the scientific community and how that has influenced theological construction. However, he does not see this as yielding materialism or monism. He does not succumb to the pressures of the scientific community, but, instead, is open to some variant of dualism or pluralism. Many have, rather than succumb to the pressure, turned to highlight a relational (albeit passive) ontology as the way to make sense of Scripture in light of the sciences. For one such example, see Ingolf U. Dalferth’s excellent work, Creatures of Possibility: The Theological Basis of Freedom (Grand Rapids, Ml: Baker Academic, 2016), 15, 20-21. 52. This move, we believe, misses the necessity of the substantial ground for relations.
12. See Aku Visla, “Theological Anthropology and the Cognitive Sciences,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Theological Anthropology, 70.
13. See Daniel N. Robinson, “Theological Anthropology and the Brain Sciences,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Theological Anthropology, 79. Robinson, himself, affirms some form of substance dualism, with its attending Cartesian intuitions. However, here, he is pushing against a common stance often held in the scientific community concerning the brain sciences, and arguing for the need of something that is not housed in the brain itself.
14. See Gerd Theissen, “Sarx, Soma, and the Transformative Pneuma: Personal Identity Endangered and Regained in Pauline Anthropology.” in The Depth of the Human Person, 166-167. He explicitly points out holistic anthropology in Paul’s anthropological view and rejects dualism as out of bounds in Paul's texts.
15. See Bruce Waltke. Old Testament Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 209-232. Waltke represents a move wherein some recognize the emphasis of holism in the Old Testament, but in the New Testament some interpreters recognize the need for a soul in Paul’s anthropology (sec 2 Corinthians 5). There arc different ways of making this move. One could understand an actual change that occurs in the Scriptures, according to progressive revelation. Wherein the Old Testament view is just different from the New Testament view. Alternatively, one might seek to harmonize the views by way of highlighting not monism but holism as the integrative motif. Also, one could argue that the Old Testament does not yield a clear teaching on anthropology, at least not definitively. Joel Green makes a distinct, but important argument, that the Bible in no way gives us a need to affirm the soul. See Joel Green. “Why the Imago Dei Should Not Be Identified with the Soul,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Theological Anthropology.
16. We have in mind panpsychism generally speaking. We also have in mind a more specified version of panpsychism, namely, Russellian monism, advanced by the famous atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell.
17. See John Cooper, Body, Soul and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate (Grand Rapids. MI: Eerdmans, 2000), xxi-xxviii.
18. Nancey Murphy, “Human Nature: Historical, Scientific, and Religious Issues,” in Whatever Happened to the Soul? Scientific and Theological Portraits of Human Nature, eds. Warren S. Brown. Nancey Murphy, and H. Newton Malony (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1998), 25.
19. Nancey Murphy, Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies? (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
20. Nancey Murphy and Warren. S. Brown, Did My Neurons Make Me Do It? Philosophical and Neurobiological Perspectives on Moral Responsibility and Free Will (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).
21. Warren S. Brown and Brad D. Strawn, The Physical Nature of Christian Life: Neuroscience, Psychology, and the Church (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
22. Joel B. Green, Body, Soul, and Human Life: The Nature of Humanity in the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008). See also his “‘Bodies-—That Is, Human Lives’: A Re-Examination of Human Nature in the Bible,” in Whatever Happened to the Soul?
23. Joel B. Green. “Eschatology and the Nature of Humans: A Reconsideration of Pertinent Biblical Evidence,” Science & Christian Belief 14, no. 1 (2002): 50. See also Green’s framing of the debate over the ontology of human persons in his “Body and Soul. Mind and Brain: Critical Issues,” in In Search of the Soul: Four Views of the Mind-Body Problem, eds. Joel B. Green and Stuart L. Palmer (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2005).
24. Lynne Rudder Baker, “Need a Christian be a Mind/Body Dualist?” Faith and Philosophy 12, no. 4 (1995): 502.
25. Lynne Rudder Baker. Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Baker summarizes her view and addresses some objections in “Materialism with a Human Face,” in Soul, Body, and Survival, cd. Kevin Corcoran (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press) as well as in “Christian Materialism in a Scientific Age.” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 70, no.
1 (2011): 47-59.
26. Lynne Rudder Baker, “Material Persons and the Doctrine of Resurrection,” Faith and Philosophy 18, no. 2 (2001): 151-167.
27. Lynne Rudder Baker, “Persons and the Metaphysics of Resurrection,” Religious Studies 43, no. 3 (2007): 333-348. Baker argues strenuously that the first-person perspective cannot be accounted for by naturalism in Naturalism and the First-Person Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
28. Kevin Corcoran, Rethinking Human Nature: A Christian Materialist Alternative to the Soul (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2006).
29. Kevin Corcoran, ed., Soul, Body, and Survival: Essays on the Metaphysics of Human Persons (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press).
30. Peter van Inwagen, “The Possibility of Resurrection,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 9, no. 2 (1978): 114—121.
31. Peter van Inwagen, “Dualism and Materialism: Jerusalem and Athens?” Faith and Philosophy 12, no. 4 (1995): 475-488.
32. Peter van Inwagen, “A Materialist Ontology of the Human Person,” in Persons: Human and Divine, eds. Peter van Inwagen and Dean Zimmerman (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007), 213-215.
33. Trenton Merricks. “There are no Criteria for Identity over Time,” Nous 32 (1998): 106-124.
34. Trenton Merricks, “The Resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting,” in Reason for the Hope Within, cd. Michael J. Murray (Grand Rapids, Ml: Eerdmans 1999), 268.
35. Merricks. “The Resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting,” 283.
36. Trenton Merricks. “How to Live Forever without Saving Your Soul: Physicalism and Immortality,” in Soul, Body, and Survival, ed. Corcoran.