9/2/11 EXCELLENT ARTICLE BY CALLIE JOUBERT REFUTING
SO-CALLED "EMERGENTISM" & PERSONS SUCH AS NANCEY MURPHY
...ever
since attending Fuller Sem & being unwittingly (albeit intentionally so,
for nefarious reasons by a duplicitous academic advisor from korea) placed in
a class taught by Nancey Murphy which made NO SENSE WHATSOEVER to
me (& I was NOT the only one; yet I completed the classwork ...albeit she
definitely had profiled me...she had her sights on me from day one, ...there definitely was gossip & social engineering in
the works at fuller sem even amongst the
faculty...& I was given an F without justification or explanation...but I refused to go to talk
to Ms. Murphy because I sensed from day one that there
was something definitely wrong with what she was teaching & the way she was
teaching (by the way I came from calvin
college & a year at calvin seminary & probably further offended Ms
Murphy when I wrote, somewhere, prior to this class, that until I arrived at
Fuller I had never heard of a Nancey
Murphy (she's not in the "canon" around Calvin, that's
for sure; which probably infuriates her all the
more).
The more I listened to Nancey Murphy & read stuff by her or about her the more I realized she was teaching a bunch of absolute gibberish (essentially fraudulent, & yet she was shaping, or mis-shaping, a lot of young minds). And I wrote a lot in refutation of what she taught, as best as I could get a handle on something that was meaningless & nonsensical (imagine somebody claiming the world is flat today & having to waste your time trying to refute the nonsense, & actually giving such a person a platform for asserting such gibberish).
you can also view it at
https://answersresearchjournal.org/emergentism-spirit-entities-physicalists/
ARTICLE BEGINS HERE
-------------------------------------------------------
Answers Research Journal 4 (2011): 113–125. www.answersingenesis.org/articles/arj/v4/n1/emergentism-physicalism
Emergentism and the Rejection of Spirit Entities: A Response to Christian Physicalists by Callie Joubert August 10, 2011
Abstract
Keywords: agency, body, consciousness, creation, emergence, evolution, free will, mental
states, mind, naturalism, person, physicalism, scientism, spirit, soul
Introduction
Professor of religion and philosophy Philip
Clayton spoke for many emergentists when he said, “Emergence is,
in my view, a necessary condition for a theological interpretation of the human
person,” although “not a sufficient condition” (Clayton 1999, p. 22). I believe
that Professor Clayton was spot on when he said that the “debate about the
human person expresses the crux of the battle between physicalist naturalism
and its opponents today” (Clayton 1999, p. 24).
But what is emergentism? Emergentism is a worldview which comprises the following three key elements:
1.
Epistemology
(theory of knowledge). What can be tested scientifically can be known. If there
are other sources of knowledge, scientific knowledge must be considered as superior to it in kind. In
other words, what and how
we can know about the world is best determined by scientific methods.
The term to express this attitude is scientism.
2.
Creation
account and the origin of life. What exist are the products of evolution—laws and processes of nature and chance—therefore objects
of nature. The term to express this mental posture is naturalism.
According to the evolutionary story of creation, over millions and billions of
years there emerged genuinely
new and novel “qualities” from matter, and “We
can now trace human origins to an extinct common ancestor of both humans and
apes, a creature that lived 5–7 million years ago. Between then and now there
have been a variety of hominid species” (Murphy 2006a, p. 87).
3.
Ontology (view of the nature of reality and the kinds of things
that exist). Physical monists
hold that all existent entities and those coming to be consist solely of
matter. The term that captures this mental posture is known as physicalism.
From this worldview follows two claims: (a) there is no such thing as a pure spiritual mental being because there is nothing that can have a mental property without having a physical property, and (b) whatever mental properties an entity may have, they emerged from, depend on, and are determined by matter. The aim in what follows is to refute these claims, by defending the following thesis: If Genesis 1 records the fundamentals of God’s intention for how things of Creation are to function, then Genesis 1:2 presents the paradigm case (most clear example) for how the relationship between spiritual and material realities is to be understood.
In Section I, I will briefly
focus on the Spirit’s presence in Genesis 1:2. This serves as
background against which three important parallel phenomena to that of the
Spirit’s relation to the earth in Genesis 1:2 will be discussed and make sense.
In Section II, I will raise a number of logical, epistemological, and
ontological objections to emergentism in the context of an analysis of an
important analogy between
God and God’s Spirit, and that of human beings
and their spirits. Attention will particularly focus on consciousness,
mental states, and an agent view of persons. In Section III, I will provide
further evidence that the soul is not only different from its body but is also
capable of existing without a body. Of importance will be Matthew 10:28
and Paul’s argument
from creation in 1 Corinthians 15.
I will begin by clarifying the position of Christian physicalism first.
Christian Physicalism
That the concept of emergence
gained popularity among “Christian physicalists” is beyond dispute (cf. Brown
and Jeeves 1998; Clayton 1999; Green 2008; Jeeves 2005; Murphy 2006b). They are
Christians who wish to harmonize their faith with science, rather than the
other way around. For them the concept of emergence is well suited to create a
sort of middle view between strong physicalists (ostensibly a position
that science demands)
and dualists (people who believe that there are also
immaterial, spiritual entities in the world, and that matter is not the only
reality). The view of Christian physicalists can be stated as follows: The
mind, consciousness and mental states are not completely identical to the brain
(matter), although it emerges from, is caused by and dependent on the physical
processes of the brain which
are, in turn, capable of being influenced by the emergent mental
phenomena.
For Christian philosophers and
theologians like professors Ian Barbour, Philip Clayton, and Nancey Murphy,
emergentism is completely compatible with their panentheism—a view of God’s relation
to the world that is also known as “naturalistic theism.” Professor Clayton is
representative in this regard:
[T]he last few decades
have brought an important new opening for science-based
reflection on the nature of God. This opening lies in the ascendance of the
concept of emergence, and more recently in the development of the new field of
Emergence Studies . . . (Clayton 2004, p. 5)
As a theological model,
panentheism is responsive to the emergent
turn . . . (Clayton 2004, p.
9).
In contrast to pantheists who
believe that God is all and all is God, and theists who believe that Creation
is a product of a personal God and therefore dependent on Him for its continued
existence (not vice versa), panentheists believe that God is in the world and the world is in God. Although
God is distinct from the world, He is not separate from the world. God
has also not created the world out of nothing (cf. Romans 4:17; Colossians 1:15–18;
Hebrews 11:3); matter
co-existed with God.
If that is true,
then that amounts to a form of idolatry, for at
least two reasons:
(a) it is compromising the ontological distinction between God and created things and the nature of His sovereignty
(Copan and Craig 2004, p. 15), and (b) it is ascribing to finite and contingent
Creation the divine quality of eternality, a quality that belongs to the Creator
alone (1 Timothy 1:17). In other words,
on the panentheistic view of
God and emergentism, God is not before creation but with and dependent on
creation for His continued existence and work in the world. The least we can
say is that, if the world of matter coexisted with God (contrary to Genesis 1:1), then it would
deserve the same veneration as the Creator. It is the impression we get from
the following words expressed by Christian psychiatrist and naturalist Dr. Bert
Thompson:
Ignoring [our]
brain[s] is the equivalent of ignoring God. The more we are paying
attention to these things [for example, feelings, memories], what our bodies—
what our brains are telling us—the more we pay attention to God. The more [we
pay] attention to the functions of [our] brain[s], the more [we] began to hear God in ways [we] had never heard him
before (emphasis added) (Thompson 2010, p. 57).
Statements by Professor Nancey
Murphy indicate that it is indeed scientism, naturalism, and physicalism that drives the hermeneutic enterprise. Here is how she expressed her physicalist thesis:
My central thesis is this . . .
we are our bodies—there is no additional metaphysical element such as a mind or soul or spirit
(Murphy 2006b, p. ix).
Elsewhere she expressed her naturalism as follows,
brains—crude as this may sound (Murphy
2006a pp. 88, 96 cf. Brown and Jeeves
1998).
[F]or better
or for worse, we have inherited a view of science as methodologically
atheistic, meaning that science..... seeks
naturalistic explanations for all natural
processes.
Christians and atheists alike must pursue scientific questions in our era
without invoking a creator........... anyone who attributes the characteristics of
living things to creative
intelligence has by definition stepped
into the arena of
either metaphysics or theology (Murphy 2007, pp. 194–195).
Professor Murphy admitted that
she could have called her position “nonreductive materialism,” (Murphy 2006b,
p. 116) but prefer “nonreductive physicalism,” (Murphy 2005, p. 116) because
the word “physicalism” indicates her agreement with the scientists and
philosophers who hold that it is not necessary to postulate a metaphysical
(immaterial) soul or mind in addition to the material body/brain. So whatever
spiritual entities that emerge from the brain is considered as just a further
stage in the evolutionary history of human beings (cf. Clayton 1999, p. 4. Professor Clayton
prefers to call his own version of naturalistic physicalism “emergent
monism”).
By this [they] mean a Biblical and theological anthropology which can sustain a physicalist view of humans without loss or degradation of Biblical teachings, theological substance or critical doctrines (Brown and Jeeves 1998, p. 6).
A review of criticisms advanced against Christian physicalists show precisely
the opposite of what they set out to accomplish (Delfino 2005; Garcia
2000, p. 239; Larmer 2000; Siemans 2005). It will suffice to say that these
criticisms revealed the exact opposite of what theologian Charles Hodge
concluded a number of years ago:
The Church has been forced more
than once to alter her interpretation of the Bible to accommodate the discoveries of science. But this has been done without
doing violence to the Scriptures or in any degree impairing their authority
(Hodge 1997, p. 573, cited in Ham 2001, p. 4).
In other words, the debate
between Christians who adopt Darwinian evolution and emergentism and their
critics must not be construed as a mere difference in hermeneutics (interpretation) of
Scripture. It cuts far deeper.
Section I:
1. Genesis 1:3
“Then God said, ‘Let there be light’...... ” The text speaks of a condition of
darkness,
blindness ,and lifelessness. It is said of Jesus that “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light
shines in the darkness,
and the darkness did not comprehend [or overpower] it.................................. [He] was the
true
light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man” (John 1:4, 5, 9). Genesis 1:3 must be understood in a literal
way, for the apostle Paul quoted the text when he said, “For God, who said, ‘Light
shall shine out of
darkness’ is the One who has shone
into our hearts
to give the light............................. ” (2
Corinthians 4:6; cf. Ephesians 1:18). We call this the doctrine of salvation which begins with liberation from darkness, spiritual
life and illumination by the Spirit of God (cf. John 3:1–16, 6:63).
2.
Genesis
1:4
“. . . and God separated the light from the darkness.” Again, Paul had this
text in mind when he revealed the following literal truth: “Do not be bound
together with unbelievers; for what partnership . . ., or what fellowship has
light with darkness? Or what harmony has Christ with Belial . . . Or what
agreement has the temple of God with idols . . .
Therefore,
come out from their midst and be separate, says the Lord” (2 Corinthians 6:14–18 cf. James 4:4). Elsewhere the
apostle used the text to remind the Ephesian Christians that “they were
formerly darkness, but you are now light in the Lord; walk as children of the
light................................... And do not
participate
in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them” (Ephesians 5:8, 11). We call this the doctrine
of sanctification (of holy and moral living).
3. Genesis 1:11
“Then
God said, ‘let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit
trees bearing fruit after their kind............ ” (cf. also verses
12, 20–22). The
Creator did precisely that in Genesis 1:26–27; He created the first human person in His image and likeness
(cf. Psalm 94:9; Ephesians 2:10). In Genesis 5:3 we are told that Adam “became the father of a son in his own
likeness, according to his image.” We call this the doctrine of created kinds.
4. Genesis 1:27
“And God created man in His own image,
in the image of God He created him; male and female.............. ” (cf. 2:24). Jesus used this text to
show that
marriage and its sanctity are
not human inventions: “Have you not read that
He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this
cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two
shall become one flesh?’ Consequently they are no longer two, but one flesh.
What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate” (Matthew 19:3–8).
It is interesting that Jesus did three things in Matthew 19. First, He showed Himself to confirm the literal creation of Adam and Eve on the sixth day of creation. Second, He showed the unity of Scripture by quoting from both Genesis 1 (verse 27) and Genesis 2 (verse 24). And third, He showed that He regarded the record of Genesis 1 and 2 as literal history. It follows that if Christians concede that people should not take Genesis 1 and 2 as written, then it would be inconsistent to expect the world to accept any part of Scripture as written. One last point, Paul used the same texts to reveal God’s will concerning authority and leadership in the church (1 Corinthians 11; 1 Timothy 2:9–15).
Scripture states that, “In the
beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). Verse 2 begins
by removing all doubt as to how that could happen:
“And the Spirit of God was moving [hovering] over the surface of the waters.”
The text indicates that the earth was there—in a certain condition (“waste” and
“emptiness”)—which required divine
action. But God’s action presuppose God’s presence, otherwise God could not have acted on the
earth. And for God to have been present through the Spirit’s hovering, the
Spirit had to be of the order of unembodied spiritual mind. This is how
Scripture reflects the attributes of the Spirit:
Who has measured the waters in
the hollow of His hand, and marked off the heavens by the span, and calculated
the dust of the earth by the measure, and weighed the mountains in a balance,
and the hills in a pair of scales? Who has directed the Spirit of the Lord, or
as His counselor has informed Him? With whom
did He consult and who gave Him understanding? And who taught
Him in the path of justice and
taught Him knowledge, and informed Him of the way of understanding? (Isaiah 40:12–14).
Genesis 1:2 makes one thing very clear. It
would be a mistake to think, just because the Spirit cannot be seen (cf. John 4:24; 1 Timothy 1:17), that He is not
present or active in the world. Now for the Spirit to have been present and
active at the beginning of God’s creation of the world imply that He made
certain things possible. Put in the reverse,
things were dependent on the Spirit’s
presence and activities for them to exist and to be in a certain
condition. So whatever appeared or came into being during the six days of
creation is to be explained by the Spirit of God—who existed prior to creation.
The Spirit of God is therefore not an entity of nature, such as a natural
physical process, but a supernatural agent.
What this means for emergentists is that they are under
huge pressure to explain
how spiritual mental entities can “emerge” from mindless matter if they are
radically different in kind from the matter from which they supposedly emerged. In contrast, biblical Christians are under no such
pressure, for God created kinds of things to reproduce their own kinds. And
since God did exactly that Himself in Genesis 1:26–27, 5:1, they already have an
instance of what an unembodied spiritual mind, consciousness and mental
properties are like—in
God. In different words, they
have a paradigm case of what a conscious personal agent is, and they accept God
as ontologically and epistemologically analogous with themselves. The same
point can also be stated this way: If God is a perfect being (cf. Matthew 5:48), then it follows
that our God is the most supreme example of a person, which means that it is
consistent that something be both a person and an immaterial spirit. Since this
is so, it follows that something is a person if and only if it bears a relevant
similarity to the supreme example. Let us focus next on three
important parallel instances
of Genesis 1:2
in order to further
demonstrate, and thus to confirm our initial intuition, that the Spirit exists
prior to matter, that the Spirit as the Giver of life, and that the Spirit is
the source of power in humans—both individually and corporately.
Genesis 2:7: The creation of man
The text (in context) allows
for several immediate inferences. Firstly, the first human being was neither a
self-caused being nor the product of physical processes of nature. Secondly,
prior to breathing, the body and its organs (including the brain) were inoperative.
Thirdly, with the inbreathing of the breath
(Hebrew: ruach—spirit,
wind) of life into the body,
the creature became
a living being, a unified centre of conscious thought, capable of
experiencing emotions, having beliefs, desires, and the power to will things.
Fourthly, it is reasonable to believe that the spirit, because of its
capacities, will use the body and its organs
as instruments to accomplish certain
purposes and through
which it can express itself (cf. Romans 6:13–19, 12:1). In other words, the
spirit needs the body to do things in the world and the body needs the spirit
to come alive.
Since it is spirit
that gave life to the body (cf. Isaiah 42:5, 57:16), and the spirit existed prior to it, the
immaterial spirit did not “emerge” from an inactive material body.
It is thus reasonable to conclude that a living human being is a composite of two radically different ontological parts: immaterial spirit and material body. We could say, a unified whole of inner invisible and outer visible parts. But the emergent monist could object and say that the breath imparted to the body was no more than biological life; alternatively, that inner and outer are merely two aspects of the same being. But if that is so, then they need identity to make their case: if whatever we can say of the inner person can also be said of the outer person, then they are the same. If, however, we can say just one thing true of the inner person that is not true of the outer person, or vice verse, then they are not just two aspects but two different ontological realities and physicalist monism is false.
And let not your adornment be
merely external—braiding hair, wearing gold jewelry, or putting on dress; but let it be the hidden person
of the heart, with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God (1 Peter 3:3–4).
Ezekiel 37:1–14: The restoration of Israel
The dry bones came together bone to bone, flesh appeared
and skin covered
the flesh. However, although the proclamation of the word of the Lord
was absolutely essential, there had been no life apart from the Spirit of God.
It was only when “the breath came into them” that they came to life. In fact,
verse 10 shows that the proclamation of the word and the life-giving activities
of the divine Spirit are inseparable, a truth Jesus emphasized in the following
words:
“It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing;
the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life” (John 6:63).
In sum, it is not difficult to see that God’s restoration of Israel as a body of people parallels God’s creative activity in Genesis 1:2 and the creation of Adam in Genesis 2:7. Without the Spirit/spirit there can be no life and power, a truth that brings us to Acts 2.
In Matthew 16:18 Jesus
said, “I will build My church,” which began with His own infilling with the
Spirit of God—in the visible form of an entity with wings (Matthew 3:16), the initial
calling of twelve “bodily parts” (disciples), and their receiving of life and power in Acts 2. Verse 1 (of Acts 2) tells us that the disciples (now about 120 of them) “were
all together in one place” when “suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a
violent, rushing wind, and it filled the house where they were sitting” as well
as each of them individually (verses 2 and 4).
Section II: Objections to Emergentism
In 1 Corinthians 2:11 the apostle Paul stated:
The analogy is clear enough: human
beings stand to their spirits
as God stand to the Spirit
of God. But to come to a proper understanding of what this means, what it
involves and entails require that we see a few things first.
Firstly, what is referred to as a thought in this text is
known as a mental state or entity (as also a belief,
sensation, feeling and desire); when a person
is thinking or knowing something, his spirit is in a
state of thinking and knowing something.
Secondly, a mental state has intentionality, since it is of or about something, and therefore has content and meaning. Put another way, the
spirit’s mental states allows it to interact with itself and other objects in
the world. Thirdly, mental states (for example,
a thought about a spider one is now seeing)
is characterized by certain attitudes—perhaps fear in the case of the
spider. Fourthly, mental states such as a thought is characterized by self-presenting properties—things a person
has direct awareness of. Fifthly, and
most remarkably, mental states are conscious states of the spirit; if a person
lacks consciousness, then he or she will not know what he or she believes,
thinks about, desires, feels, or wills.
We can now state the relationship between the spirit
and the knowing
of its own thoughts as follows:
1.
If the human
spirit (or God’s) includes thoughts, then the spirit is necessarily such that whenever
a thought is exemplified, it exemplifies the spirit.
2.
If the human
spirit (or God’s) entails thoughts, then the spirit is necessarily such that when a thought
is attributed to it, then a capacity
(to think) is attributed to it. Another way of saying the same thing is,
when a thought is attributed to the spirit, then it is reasonable to believe
that a thought belongs to it.
This characterization makes it
reasonable to say this: If conscious thinking, self- awareness, and
intentionality (knowing what one’s thinking is of or about) are essential
properties of the immaterial Spirit of God and the spirit of man, then they are
self-presenting properties. That is, they are distinctive properties of a
conscious first-person, knowing
and intentional entity
(a subject). It means that I
can adopt certain attitudes toward objects, for example, to believe they exist,
hope they love me, fear or hate them. Our quoted text refers to the existence
of the spirit of God and God’s thoughts.
to him as a spiritual mental
person. This means that God has no need to communicate first to someone’s brain before He communicates with him or her.
In short, 1 Corinthians 2:11 underlines
three truths: (1) private awareness of one’s own mental life; (2) direct and
immediate awareness of one’s mental life;
(3) the existence of an immaterial spirit and mental capacities.
Consciousness, mental states and emergence According to naturalist Evan Fales,
Darwinian evolution implies that
human beings emerged through the blind operation of natural forces. It is mysterious
how such forces could generate something nonphysical; all known causal laws
that govern the physical relate physical states of affairs to other physical
states of affairs.
Since such processes evidently have produced
consciousness, however construed, consciousness is evidently a natural
phenomenon, and dependent on natural phenomena (Fales 2007, p. 120).
The question of how consciousness could emerge from matter is for the naturalist
simply a question about how the brain works to produce mental states even
though neurons (brain cells) are not conscious. In other words, they lack the
ability to feel, as open-skull brain surgery amply
demonstrates. We can therefore
not afford to miss Fales’ difficulty: consciousness cannot be natural when
consciousness emerges from unconscious mindless matter—given Darwinian
evolution. And in this he is not alone. Naturalist philosopher Jerry Fodor was
direct and forthright when he confessed:
Nobody has the slightest idea how
anything material could be conscious. Nobody even knows what it would be like to have the slightest idea how anything
material could be conscious. So much for the philosophy of consciousness
(Boden 1998, p. 1).
There is a second obstacle in the way of naturalists who try to explain the emergence of consciousness and mental states from matter, and it is found in their models through which they image its emergence. Why is it an obstacle? Invisible, immaterial entities are not imageable. Any use of a visual metaphor to illustrate or imagine how consciousness and mental states could emerge from matter is therefore void of any meaning whatsoever. A favorite example of naturalists to illustrate emergence is liquidity. The scientific explanation is that, given the collection of a number of water molecules, liquidity emerges. But that is not the whole story; a scientific explanation tells us what must happen when a number of water molecules gather together. In other words, it explains why it must be necessarily so and not otherwise.
Now, to apply the emergence of liquidity to the mind’s
interaction with the brain
is a bad analogy. Firstly, liquidity is not caused by the water molecules; it
just is a necessary feature of water molecules coming together. And neither
does liquidity exercise any causal influence on the molecules as its
constituent parts.
Secondly, if a neuroscientist can
find regular correlations between a person’s mental life and brain
activity, then that bears a relevant similarity to the spirit
of God and creation in Genesis 1:2, and that means
that those correlations must be unnatural for the naturalist, not natural. But
since we cannot image or picture consciousness, we are not able to imagine the
causal interaction between the mind and brain.
The real problem
for emergentists is to explain
how mindless matter
can produce entities that are
radically different from it in kind. Naturalist professor of philosophy D. M.
Armstrong hit the nail on the head when he stated that
What Professor Armstrong told
his fellow naturalists is clear enough: two radically different entities (mind
and matter) cannot emerge from purely physical
parts. We can put it in another
way. Any first member in a given series
of subsequent members can only pass on what it itself possesses.
It stands to reason,
what comes from the physical
by means of the physical
can only be physical.
Agent causation and emergence
Neuroscientist Professor Michael Gazzaniga recently
estimated that between
“98 to 99 percent” of “cognitive neuroscientists share a common
commitment to reductive materialism in seeking to explain mental phenomena”
(cited in Snead 2007, p. 15). One of the one to two percent of non-physicalist neuroscientists who does not share this view, based on his interpretation of
scientific data, is Mario Beauregard. However, he agreed that the “discipline
of neuroscience is materialist” (Beauregard and O’Leary 2008, p. x). George
Botterill and Peter Carruthers stated that “physicalism of one sort of another
is now the default approach in the philosophy of mind” (Botterill and
Carruthers 1999, p. 4).
If we need to know what is at the bottom
of all this, we need not look too far and
for too long. This is how naturalist John Bishop explained it:
natural perspective. Naturalism
does not essentially employ the concept of a causal relation whose first member is in the category of person or
agent (or even, for that matter,
in the broader category of continuant or ‘substance’). All natural
causal relations have first members in the category of event or state of
affairs (Bishop 1989, p. 40).
For Professor Timothy O’Connor—who is a theist, but not a naturalist—an agent view of freedom of the will, will be pointless since it out-rightly contradicts “the scientific facts” (O’Connor 2000, p. 108). He therefore adopted a view of agent causal power as an emergent phenomenon. It becomes accordingly important to get clear about what is meant with agent and free will.
Firstly, an agent is a person
with special capacities as part of his constitution— thoughts, beliefs,
desires, sensations (feelings), the ability to know and understand things,
practical judgment, and so on. Secondly, an agent must possess consciousness,
otherwise he or she would be unable to present to him or herself possible
courses of action and evaluate whether a given action is appropriate or not,
including evaluating whether his or her beliefs, desires, feelings, or thoughts—associated with the action—is
relevant or not. Thirdly, an agent must remain the same through
change, otherwise the person who committed a crime a week ago and is now
standing in front of the judge cannot be punished for his crimes (if he is
found guilty).
Recall that thought implies a
thinker (1 Corinthians 2:11). To refer to a thinker is to refer to a particular that has the thought; Jane is the owner/possessor of her
consciousness and mental
states. It further
means the thinker
is the bearer of her own properties, that the thinker
exists prior to her properties and the mental states she exemplifies, thus that the thinker is a substance. The simple fact is that a substance remains the same through
change; a leaf, for example, can go from green to red and still remain the same
leaf. Now if a self/thinker emerges or emerged from thinking matter (a brain)
then thinking causes a thinker— something that is logically incoherent. The
converse is rather true; thoughts and other mental states depend on a self/thinker
to become real. If no thinker, then no thought—simple!
Fourthly, an agent must be able to design
an action plan. Consider the difference
between basic actions and non-basic actions. Suppose you wish to buy bread from
a bakery you recently heard about. Suppose further that you decided to drive to
the bakery instead of riding your bicycle. Picking up your car keys is a basic
action in a series of acts until you fulfilled your non-basic intention—the
buying of bread. The point
is, basic actions produce direct and immediate effects by the action. We can therefore say that agents have
causal powers to produce direct and immediate results in the world.
Fifthly, and closely related to the previous point, given choice A (to raise one’s hand to vote) or B (to leave the room), nothing else than the person determines that choice. The agent determines her own choice by exercising her causal powers and will to do one of two alternatives, or refrain from doing anything at all. That also says, if the agent willed to do A, she could also have willed B. She is thus a first or unmoved mover. It is granted, however, that her feelings, desires, beliefs, and thoughts may influence her choices, but free acts are in no way caused by prior events or states in her as an agent. Let me characterize what I have said so far in the following way:
1.
A person
is a substance that has the power
(ability) to cause a broom to
move.
2.
A person
exerts his or her power
as a first mover (an uncaused cause
of action) to cause the broom to move.
3.
A person
has the ability to refrain
from exerting his or her power to cause
the broom to move.
4.
A person
caused the broom to move for the sake of some final cause (for example, to clean the floor), which
is the reason the person caused the moving of the broom.
We can also put it this way: a
broom moves the leaves but is itself moved by my hand that is moved by me. In
other words, I am the direct, primary, first unmoved caused of the leaves. We
can see that both the broom and hand moving are events caused by me. However,
a physicalist neuroscientist may object to this.
We know from physiology that there are still other events between me and my
hand moving, for example, the muscles in my arm and the events taking place in
my brain. Even if that is so, the principle still holds: I am also the cause of
my brain events. The objection is this: If the brain moves muscles and caused
the hand to move, then there is no point to appeal to an agent as distinguished
from an event—for the whole thing is a matter of causal relations among events
or states of affairs.
However, during this whole process of me doing something, I made a whole lot of
things to happen which are not in any sense things that I do: I would have made
air-particles to move; I may have freed an ant heap from the pressure that had
been upon it by the broom; I may also have caused a shadow to move from one
place to another. What is the point? If these are merely things that I made to
happen, as distinguished from what I do, then I may know nothing about them.
And this is exactly
how it works with so-called unconscious events in the brain.
It is not to say that if I am
not aware of making things to happen in my brain when I do something with
the broom, that I am not the cause of events happening within my brain. The
same point can be put slightly different. Whenever a person does a certain
thing, then he makes a whole series of events to happen, only some of which are
identified by him and by him as his doing that.
Whether this is something
emergent physicalists will contemplate remains doubtful, for as naturalist John
Bishop has indicated, natural agency is a problem for a naturalist scientific
worldview. The question that arises now is: Are we responsible for our thoughts,
beliefs, desires, emotions, and choices? Why is this an important question? If we
are not responsible for these things, then an agent cannot be held responsible
for her actions. However, if there was a time when Joe acquired them, then he
could also not have acquired them, and is therefore responsible for them. And
if he is responsible for his desires and beliefs,
then so also the choices and actions they lead to.
Section III:
In 2008 theologian Professor Gordon Zerbe wrote
an article in which he made
this statement:
. . . nowhere does Paul attach
to this word [psychē] the idea of an ‘immortal soul’ temporarily resident in a body as its essential core
(Zerbe 2008, pp. 1–2).
Professor Zerbe’s statement
might lead Christians to conclude that Paul did not believe in the
existence of the soul or that the soul cannot survive the death of its body, and that would be a mistake. While we can concede that Paul did not refer to the “soul and the body,” it is
important not to ignore what Paul presupposed. In order to show that I will
first present a brief analysis of Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 10:28.
It is important to look at the context
in which Jesus uttered the following words:
Verse 1 informs us that Jesus
“summoned His twelve disciples” and “gave them authority over unclean spirits,
to cast them out.” Among
his lessons was alerting
them to the fact that they should not think that their mission would be without
persecution or suffering (verses 17–18). In verse 26, Jesus told the disciples
who not to fear, in contradistinction to Whom they ought to fear (verse 28). A
few remarks will accordingly be in order.
Firstly, the context indicates
that there are three types of persons capable of interacting with human
persons: two immaterial, and one with matter as part of its constitution (the
human person). The one kind of immaterial entity is a tormented disembodied unclean spirit (demon)
which, to all appearances,
desires a body to inhabit—human or animal; it needs a body simply because it is
the vehicle through which it manifests itself (cf. Mark 5:1–15). The other kind of
immaterial entity is the unembodied Holy Spirit, who
does not need a body but is nevertheless capable of entering
one (cf. Acts 2:1–4, 38). How that is so is of lesser importance than the fact that it
is so. The important point to see is this: the metaphysical identity of
immaterial spiritual entities neither depends on nor is determined by the
material bodies they enter or exit. Now if this is true, then it is also true
of human persons.
Secondly, Jesus did not express something entirely new to His disciples. The Hebrew people believed that death did not completely remove the deceased from God’s hand. Deuteronomy, 1 Samuel and other passages in Scripture (cf. Job 10:21–22; Ezekiel 26:20) and especially works written during the last two centuries preceding Jesus’ birth (for example, the Apocrypha) testify to ancient Jewish beliefs. Must we think that the Jews’ understanding of the soul (and the afterlife) was defective? Perhaps their understanding deepened over time. If their ideas had been completely erroneous, would not our Lord have corrected them? Whereas He scolded the Jews on many points, He never contradicted nor corrected their beliefs concerning the soul and hell.
This leads to a third and related point, and that is that Jesus’ words in Matthew 10:28 gives us the reason for His choice of words: salvation and the reality of the afterlife. The facts of Scripture compel its readers to conclude that Jesus offered humankind the opportunity to have their souls saved—before death (John 3:1– 16; James 5:20), and the hope of a new body—after death (Mark 9:42–48; Luke 16:19–31; 1 Corinthians 15). In other words, the saving of the soul is the first in a process of total redemption. If we now refocus attention on Jesus’ words, then we can summarize His logic as follows:
2. The soul and body is contrasted to express the truth of point (1).
3.
Jesus had a reason
for making the distinction between
soul and body:
it is a matter of life and
death.
4.
The soul survives the death of the body—there is a destiny
awaiting every person after
death.
5.
There is Someone to fear, a fear that ought to exceed any fear of what men can do to the body.
Let us now focus
attention on Professor
Zerbe and the apostle Paul. Professor Zerbe and the apostle Paul
There are at least five reasons
to think that Professor Zerbe’s statement represents a misconstrual of Paul’s
understanding of the ontological constitution of the human person
and life between
death and the resurrection. Firstly,
while it has already been conceded
that Paul nowhere attached “soul” to body, it is important not to ignore what
Paul presupposed. I will therefore show next that Paul neither contradicted
Jesus’ choice of terms nor presented Christian teaching in a more exact way
than Jesus, since these ideas could be unintended consequences of Professor
Zerbe’s statement.
Here follows just a few
examples:
1. Just as the soul stands in need of purification from sin (1 Peter 1:22), so does
the spirit (2 Corinthians 7:1).
2. At death, either the “soul”
or the “spirit” departs. Rachel’s soul departed (Genesis 35:18) and the rich fool’s soul was required (Luke 12:20); Elijah prayed that the dead child’s
life (breath/spirit) returns
to his body (1 Kings 17:17, 21), and David committed his spirit to the Lord (Psalm 31:5).
3. A person can be troubled either
in “soul” or in “spirit.” Jesus was troubled in His soul (John 12:27 cf. Isaiah 53:11) as well as troubled in His spirit (John 13:21).
4. A person worships God either with the “soul”
or the “spirit.” David’s soul rejoiced in the Lord (Psalm 25:1, 62:1, 103:1) and Mary’s soul made the Lord great (Luke 1:46); Paul prayed with his spirit (1
Corinthians 14:14– 15) and Mary’s spirit worshipped the Lord (Luke 1:47)—note that this is an example of Hebrew parallelism, a
poetic device in which the same idea is repeated using different but synonymous
words.
Thirdly, just because Paul did
not use “soul” in conjunction with body does not mean such a conjunction is not
real. Jesus used “soul” and “body” in the same context as His reference to
hell. As a fact, Paul never used the term hell. Are we now at liberty to conclude that there is no such reality, that Jesus was wrong and Paul more truthful to reality? Far
from it. Paul used the word “destruction” instead of hell, and used “spirit”
and “body” in the context of holy living and purification of sins—the things
that would keep us from inheriting the kingdom of God (cf. 1 Corinthians
6:9–20 with 1 Corinthians
7:33–35, and 2 Corinthians 6:14–18 with 2 Corinthians 7:1ff.). The only Scriptural alternative to
the kingdom of God is hell/destruction. There are therefore no grounds to think that Paul did
not presuppose the teaching of his Lord and Savior.
1 Corinthians 15
Deniers of the resurrection, Paul said, are “fools” (verse
36), which must have cut deeply into their hearts, for Greeks
were lovers of wisdom—how to rightly discern the true nature of things that
exist (1 Corinthians 1:22).
The logic of Paul’s turning to Genesis (the Beginning) to understand salvation
and the end— the “how” and “in what body” of the new life—can therefore be put
as follows (adapted from Worthington 2010, p. 139):
1. Question: “How are the dead raised?
With what kind of body do they come?” (verse 35)
2. Preamble: Consider God’s creation in Genesis 1 and 2 (verses
36–43).
3. Answer: A natural (psychikon) body is sown, it is raised
a spiritual (pneumatikon) body.
4. Explanation: Compare Genesis 2:7—“the first man Adam” who was able to produce his own
kind (Genesis
5:3)—with
Jesus’ resurrection (verses 44– 49). Not only is He the first of His kind, but He is also able to produce
after His kind, since He is now a “life-giving spirit” (verse 45).
In verses 38 and 39 Paul made
reference to two realities: the ontological difference between the various
bodies—men, beasts, birds, and fish—and
the will and action of God in
creation. That God “gives” each its body is certainly a creative act (it involves
life, growth and change), therefore, of the same character
as “formed,” “created,” and “made” in Genesis 2:7 and 5: 1 respectively. The
important point is that human beings are separated from the rest of Creation
(cf. Genesis 1:20–25 with
the image of God in Genesis 1:26–27).
The challenge now is to determine whether Paul believed in an intermediate state and whether Genesis 2:7 depicts a human being as a composite of two different ontological realities (that is, an immaterial spirit/soul and material body). First there is the apostle Peter, whom Paul referred to in verse 5 of 1 Corinthians 15. It must have been during the period between Jesus’ resurrection and departure from the Earth that Peter had discovered that Jesus was alive between His death on the cross and His resurrection from the dead. He informed us that Jesus went to proclaim the gospel of the new life in Him to those whose bodies perished during Noah’s Flood because of disobedience and disbelief (1 Peter 3:18–21, 4:6). Not only were they—Jesus and those that perished—alive, but they had been alive without material bodies. It is therefore consistent for Paul to have said that, “He who descended [to the lower parts of the earth] is Himself also He who ascended far above all the heavens” (Ephesians 4:9–10). The point is simply this, had Jesus been identical with His body, then His identity would have been dependent on His body as well, and that is not so; His body underwent radical change. Put differently, had Jesus been subject to change in Himself (his inner immaterial spiritual person) due to the change that took place in His material body, then the writer of the letter to the Hebrews could not have stated that “Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday and today, yes and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). If it is true of Jesus, then it must be true of us, for He was fully human.
But what about the “soul,” that it is not even mentioned by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15? Again, we should be careful
not to ignore what Paul presupposed. The Greeks were familiar with the reality
of the soul and the idea of immortality; what they could not grasp was the “how”
and “in what body” the resurrection would happen. Moreover, in 2 Corinthians 5 Paul
used the metaphor of “earthly tent which is our house” [not prison!] (verse 1);
in verse 4 he clearly intimated the he (and we) are indeed residents “in this
house,” and in verse 10 he stated clearly that we would one day appear before
the Lord to give an account of how we lived in the body. If the resident and
the house were the same things, and the resident not its essential dweller,
then God would have to judge the “house” as well, and that is not what Paul
said. Why is the “house” excluded? By now we know the answer: It does not make
sense to presuppose consciousness and self- awareness of matter for it to exist
or to be so characterized. Further, consciousness and mental states has
intentionality—they are of or about other things. In contrast, physical objects
stand in various relations to other physical objects, but one physical object
is not of or about another one. Why? Physical objects lack consciousness and
intentionality.
Concluding Remarks
This implies that Christian physicalists lack an adequate understanding of a mental substance and/or evolutionary theory. If agency is a feature of both human and divine action, then three things follow. Firstly, it has implications for how a person interacts with the world. Secondly, substance dualism is as an obstacle to monism and naturalistic explanations of human persons. And thirdly, the truth of Genesis 1 and 2 is a powerful and a legitimate source of knowledge about the world, as is the rest of Scripture (2 Timothy 3:16–17).
Acknowledgments
References
Armstrong, D. M. 1968. A materialist theory of mind. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Beauregard, M., and D. O’Leary. 2008. The spiritual brain. A neuroscientist’s case for
the existence of the soul. New York: HarperOne.
Bishop, J. 1989. Natural agency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Botterill, G., and P. Carruthers. 1999. The philosophy of psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Boden, M. 1998. Consciousness and
human identity: An interdisciplinary perspective. In Consciousness and human identity, ed. J. Cornwell. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Brown, W. S., and M. A. Jeeves. 1998. Portraits of human nature: Reconciling neuroscience and Christian anthropology. Science and Christian Belief 11, no.
2:139–150.
Churchland, P. M. 1984. Matter and consciousness. Cambridge: MIT
Press.
Clayton, P. 2004. The emergence of spirit. Retrieved on March 16, 2011, from
http://philipclayton.net/files/papers/EmergenceOfSpirit.pdf.
Copan, P., and L. G. Craig.
2004. Creation out of nothing:
A biblical, philosophical, and scientific exploration. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic.
Corning, P. A. 2002. The re-emergence of “emergence.” A venerable concept in search of a theory. Complexity 7, no. 6: 18–30. Retrieved on March 23, 2011, from http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.114.1724.
Delfino, R. A. 2005. Christian physicalism and personal identity. Retrieved on February 2, 2011, from http://www.metanexus.net/magazine/tabid/68/id/10449/Default.aspx.
Fales, E. 2007. Naturalism and physicalism. In The Cambridge companion to atheism, ed. M. Martin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Garcia, R. K. 2000. Minds
sans miracles: Colin McGinn’s naturalized mysticism.
Philosophia Christi 2, no.
2:227–242.
Green, J. B. 2008. Body, soul, and human
life. The nature of humanity
in the Bible. Grand Rapids, Michigan:
Baker Academic.
Ham, K.
2001. The big picture. Being wrong about the six days of creation does not automatically mean someone is not a Christian. But if you think that makes it unimportant, stand back and look at the
big picture....... Creation Ex
Nihilo 23, no.
2:16–18. Retrieved on February
9, 2011, from http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v23/i2/bigpicture.asp.
Hodge, C. 1873. Systematic theology. Reprint Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1997.
Jeeves, M. 2005. Neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and the image of God.
Perspectives on Science
and Christian Faith 57, no. 3:170–186.
Larmer, R. A. 2000. Christian anthropology: Saving the soul?
Philosophia Christi
2, no. 2:211–226.
Murphy, N. 2005. Nonreductive physicalism. In Search of the soul: Four views of the
mind-body problem, eds. J. B. Green and S. L.
Palmer, pp. 115–152. Illinois: InterVarsity Press.
Murphy, N. 2006a. Scientific
perspectives on Christian anthropology. CTI Reflections 8:82–100. Retrieved
on June 20, 2010, from www.lastseminary.com.
Murphy, N. 2006b. Bodies and souls, or spirited
bodies? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Murphy, N. 2007. In Intelligent design. science
or religion? Critical
perspectives, eds. R.
B. Baird and S. E. Rosenbaum. New York: Prometheus Books.
Restak, R. 2006. The naked brain: How the emerging neurosociety is changing how we live, work, and love. New York: Three Rivers Press.
Siemans, D. F. 2005. Neuroscience, theology, and unintended consequences.
Perspectives on Science
and Christian Faith 57, no. 3:187–190.
Snead, O. C. 2007. Neuroimaging and the ‘complexity’ of capital punishment. Retrieved on November 9,
2010, from http://www.works.bepress.com/orlando_snead/3/cgi/viewcontent.cgi? article=1002&context=orlando_snead.
Thompson, C. 2010. Anatomy of the soul: Surprising connections between neuroscience and spiritual practices that
can transform your life and relationships. Texas:
Saltriver/Tyndale House.
Worthington, J. D. 2010. The beginning and before:
Interpreting creation in Paul and Philo. Ph.D. thesis, Durham University. Retrieved on April 8, 2011, from http://etheses.dur.ac.ak/397/.
Zerbe, G. 2008. Paul on the human being
as a “psychic body”: Neither
dualist nor monist. Direction Journal,
37, no. 2:168–184. Retrieved on March 17, 2011, from http://www.directionjournal.org/article/?1527.
Answers Research Journal
Cutting-edge creation research.
Free. Answers Research Journal (ARJ) is a professional, peer-reviewed technical journal for
the publication of interdisciplinary scientific and other relevant
research from the perspective of the recent Creation and the global
Flood within a biblical framework.
Call for papers
High-quality papers for Answers Research Journal, sponsored by Answers in Genesis, are now invited
for submission. Interested authors should download
and read the Instructions to Authors Manual PDF file for all details of requirements, procedures,
paper mechanics, referencing style, and the technical review process for
submitted papers.
 |
·
Outreach
·
Kids
·
Research
·
more
·
Archives
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/arj/v4/n1/emergentism-physicalism? utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed
%3A+AIGDaily+%28Answers+in+Genesis+Daily+Articles
END OF ARTICLE
