William Hasker, "Persons as Emergent Substances"

One of the issues I have been most interested in the past few years has been the theological understanding of anthropology. How does one define a human being scripturally and philosophically? My fascination and opinion on this began in my undergraduate studies, when I wrote a paper on the dichotomy vs. trichotomy issue for a theology class. The options presented to me in that class for a biblical anthropology were dichotomy (human beings are made up of body and soul/spirit—two separate things) and trichotomy (human beings are made up of soul, spirit, and body—three separate things). As I recall, the battles were heated, though in retrospect there is precious little difference between either of those views. They are both rooted in Cartesian dualism.

In my paper, I actually began to depart from that thinking. I proposed a third possibility, which really began as little more than a redefinition of terms but actually set me on the road to thinking about anthropology from a radically different perspective. I proposed that the term “soul” was a reference to the “whole person,” which is how man can become a “living soul” in Genesis. The term “spirit” was a reference to the spiritual part of a human, and the body was the body. At the time, I had not radically departed from the dualist interpretation, but the definition of the terms paved the way for my departure.

In the Christmas series I preached in December of 2007, I proposed a radically different understanding of the incarnation of Christ based on a completely different anthropological understanding (you can go here to subscribe to those podcasts—the series was called “The Theology of Christmas”). My understanding of anthropology, though, was not born in December of ’07, but evolved over the years from my original dualism.

My current concept of humanity is that people can only be understood properly in the context of the physical body. The notion that who we really are is our “souls” or “spirits” (loosely thought of as a kind of “ghost” which animates our physical shells) does not really seem like the understanding developed in scripture to me. We are created to be physical, we live physically, and we are destined to be in eternity physically. We are physical people. Hence, while the terms in my paper did begin my journey toward this view, they did not encapsulate it. In my anthropology, based largely on the creation account of Genesis, man is primarily physical (God formed man of the dust of the earth) with a “spirit” breathed into him. The “spirit” must be defined, and it really never is in the Bible. I have defined it to myself as “personality.” God “breathed” personhood into the man when he animated the lifeless body. The “spirit” isn’t really a ghost, but the ability to think, feel, and relate. It is something special which not every physical body (as in the animals) has in equal proportions, but it is not a ghost. This spiritual body is called the “soul” in Genesis. It is not two parts, but a single entity. It is a physical body which operates on a spiritual level.

I think this view is not only a better understanding scripturally, it is also a better understanding from the view of modern science. Scientifically, the function of the brain for thought, emotion, and even ethics has been empirically verified. This article in TIME magazine is a great example of the physiological root of human ethics. My graduate advisor at LCS has also done a lot of research into this topic. He has published his own conclusions about this, and has influenced my thinking as well.

This, of course, does not fly with many, many people! But, it is the view I have. Until very recently I had not read a lot that interacted with it, and then I opened up a book I’d been putting off for some time. A few Christmases ago, I’d gotten the book edited by Kevin Corcoran, Soul, Body, and Survival: Essays on the Metaphysics of Human Persons. It is a collection of essays from primarily three perspectives: Cartesian dualism, physicalism, and the unity view. I have to admit, I am glad to have finally explored this book.

Interestingly, the chapter I enjoyed the most was by William Hasker, who has written a lot from the perspective of Open Theism (is it any wonder I like him?). He did a chapter called “Persons as Emergent Substances.” His argument is that, basically, physicalism (materialism) and dualism are up against series crises. He proposes a third option, the Middle Way.

The purely physicalist interpretation, which might be what my view above sounds like—though I don’t mean it to—is seen as inadequate. It doesn’t account for “the phenomena of mind (108).” Furthermore, he feels the view is going to be completely out of vogue very soon as “ethics, religion, metaphysics, and science all go about their business largely untroubled by the positivist assault, which is well on its way to becoming a distant memory (108).” In other words, logical positivism (empiricism) is on its way out. So goes materialism. Perhaps.

His critique of dualism is much more fun. I’m including some quotes which may help outline some of his thought.

“My complaints against Cartesian dualism are basically two. The first is that it cannot plausibly account for the extensive and intimate dependence of mind on brain that we find to exist. Some forms of dependence, of course, are readily understandable on Cartesian assumptions. The immaterial mind will be dependent on the brain as the channel for sensory information, and as the control center for bodily movement. It is therefore to be expected that sensory and motor capacities will be brain-dependent, and that impairment of brain function will interfere with those capacities. But why should consciousness itself be interrupted by a blow to the head, or dose of medication? And why should a personality be drastically altered—sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently—by injury to the brain or chemical inbalance in the brain? (112)”

“the functioning of the brain, and indeed of quite specific regions within the brain, is required for and intimately involved in some highly sophisticated mental processes; we do not have a situation, as Cartesian dualism might lead us to suppose, in which the body and brain merely serve up raw perceptual data which is then understood and interpreted by the immaterial mind. I believe, therefore, that an adequate theory of mind must allow for the dependence of mental activity upon brain function in a way that is stronger than Cartesian dualism can readily accommodate (112).”

“Cartesian souls, of course, cannot be replicated through biological reproduction; they must be directly created by God. And, given the universal divine activity of conservation, they are ‘naturally immortal.’ This fact seemed to Descartes good reason to deny souls to the beasts; thus his infamous doctrine that animals are mere atomata. Surely we cannot follow Descartes on this; a contemporary Cartesian must assign souls to the animals as well as to human beings (113).” Interestingly, I think scripture does as well. Genesis 9:10 refers to the animals as “living creatures” in the English translations, but the Hebrew is “nephesh” or “souls.” Also, I think Romans 8 paints a picture of the realm of nature waiting for its redemption. There will be animals in heaven, I think. They, too, are souls. Yet, I am not tempted to become a vegetarian, yet.

I began to be uncomfortable with Hasker at this point, “There is need, in short for a middle way in the philosophy of mind, a perspective which reduces the gulf between mind and matter without doing violence to the nature of either (114).” At first I thought he was looking for some type of “hypostatic union,” which is an idea about Christology which I have largely abandoned. But, I was pleased to read a much different idea.

“Cartesian dualism simply accepts the chasm, postulating the soul as an entity of a completely different nature than the physical, an entity with no essential or internal relationship to the body, which must be added to the body ab extra by a special divine act of creation. This scheme is not without initial plausibility from a theistic point of view, but I believe it carries with it insuperable difficulties. (paragraph break) In rejecting such dualisms, we implicitly affirm that the human mind is produced by the human brain and is not a separate element ‘added to’ the brain from outside. This leads to the further conclusion that mental properties are ‘emergent’ in the following sense: they are properties that manifest themselves when the appropriate mental constituents are placed in special highly complex relationships but which are neither observable in simpler configurations nor derivable from properties which are thus observable (115-116).”

I like this idea, but it is still not complete. “A conscious experience simply is a unity, and to decompose it into a collection of separate parts is to falsify it. So it is not enough to say that there are emergent properties here; what is needed is an emergent individual, a new individual entity which comes into existence as a result of a certain functional configuration of the material constituents of the brain and nervous system (116).”

The problems Hasker claims to solve are these: “This theory makes intelligible, as Cartesian dualism does not, the intimate dependence of consciousness and mental processes on brain function. And, finally, it is completely free of embarrassment over the souls of animals. Animals have souls, just as we do...(117)”

Hasker is becoming one of my favorites. A look at my wish list reveals a few of his books I’m looking for. I really feel that in this chapter all that is needed is a re-deployment of terminology and he would be very close to the anthropology I have posited. The “soul” which is commonly used in philosophical theology, and which he also uses, for “mind” I think should be the “consciousness” or the “unity,” the whole person. What he calls “soul,” I call the “spirit.” If the brain produces mind or spirit, what emerges then is “soul” or the unity.

One last implication before I trudge off to go to sleep. If the Cartesian view of creation of new people is true, one wonders why God participates in giving souls to people born to terrible situations. It seems to me that when two people produce a child, they are in fact producing a new soul completely apart from the decision or will of God. God gave us the ability to create new people entirely. They are souls without his immediate participation, but he participates by creating the system in which they can be created by people. Furthermore, if technology is developed which would clone humans, I believe the cloned humans would be genetically similar to their hosts, but would be different souls—not soulless creatures similar to the “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” scenario. In this way, this anthropological view is more closely in line with Open Theism. Perhaps this is why Hasker and I are intrigued by it.

Anyway, it is an interesting idea. I still wonder if Hasker’s view doesn’t differ very strongly from my view of unity. If it does, I’m tempted to move to Hasker’s view. The bottom line is I don’t think we are as much a mixture of different parts as the dualists have made us out to be. We are a unity of things, and that unity is really inseparable. The dichotomy/trichotomy issue is an internal struggle of the dualists. I have abandoned that discussion.

Much of the book deals with the ramifications of these ideas on resurrection. Truthfully, I don’t really have a lot of questions about that, but I do think the contributors have adequately defended the resurrection value of my view.

At any rate, I heartily recommend this book to those of you who are dealing with this topic in your thinking.

Boyd, Prayer, and God's Will

I was visiting with a dear, sweet lady from our church who has been dealing with cancer for many years. Recently she underwent a very drastic surgical procedure in an attempt to remove the cancer from her body. She has been recovering for weeks but is still in a nursing home. The surgery caused a minor stroke, she lost use of one of her arms, a leg, as well as a portion of her personal dignity. For what it's worth, I think she's been wishing that she had not done the surgery at all.

On one of my first visits to her since she was transferred form the hospital to a nurshing home, she looked up at me and asked me, "Jason, you don't think God did this to me, do you?" Wow, what an interesting question. How to answer?

Well, I have to admit the answer wasn't difficult for me at all. I have a lot of thoughts on this, and a very strong opinion. At the nursing home that day was not the place for a passionate theological treatise, I knew my answer needed to provide comfort and help. So I told her, "No, God did not do this to you. But the wonderful thing is, he is experiencing it with you and loving you. He knows what it is to endure pain and indignity." Of course, God did NOT do this to her. To my mind, the answer is simply that God has created an open system in which free choice can happen, has happened, and has introduced evil and suffering into the system. From there, bad things happen because people choose to do them and because nature responds according to its programming, which allows for random evils like sickness and tragedy. There are coincidences! God is working within that system, but not in any way which overrides human free will. God does not have a specific reason for allowing suffering or causing it--instead he accepts it as a part of the situation and works within those events to bring good out of them. The ultimate answer, of course, is that he deals with the situation of our pain and suffering by enduring it--on the cross.

Let me try another explanation. In a system in which people are free to make decisions, if person a and person b both desire to be in one place at one time, without knowing the other is there or wants that, there will likely be an accident. This does not mean that God decided for there to be an accident, but that those people, coincidentally, decided to be there. Think about it. In a system in which there are billions of free agents and a natural system in which natural things operate according to programming among those free agents, why must accidents and problems be attributed to divine will? Existence really a chaos of sorts. So is it surprising that things happen which are good and things happen which are bad?

This makes it impossible to know with certainty that God has acted in a certain situation. I heard a guy on a Christian radio station the other day telling a story about a man who sold his home--shortly before the land was taken over by the government. The preacher insisted that this was a proof of God's involvement, that God's plan was working out for this person. Perhaps! I have to admit it could be the case. But must it necessarily be? Not to mention the fact that in saving this man from the problem, God subjected another to it. What about the fact that in a system in which sometimes people buy, sometimes people sell, and sometimes the government takes over land--in a large system in which these things happen all over the place on a daily basis--is it really so hard to believe that it might be a coincidence that the man sold his house shortly before the government took it over (and another bought his house shortly before the government took it over--the same house)? There simply MUST be a capacity for coincidence in an open system. There CANNOT be freedom if there are NO ACCIDENTS.

But I have to admit also that I don't think a lot of the people I know would have been able to answer it the same way I did. Good Arminian theologians, raised and educated in Arminian tradition have prescribed to the position which says that everything which happens has a specific pre-ordained purpose in the plan of God. They say that either God "allowed" it for a purpose or "caused" it for a purpose. Both of these, I think, are biblically and intellectually unintelligible. How do you tell someone that God's plan and intention was for them to suffer in this way to bring about some good? Why do you tell them that? What is the purpose?

I know I mention him a lot, but it always amazes me how often I listen to or read Greg Boyd and discover our similarity on an issue. He has been preaching on the Lord's Prayer in Luke and has done three sermons (as of the writing of this post only two have been podcasted, but I assume the third will be available this week). They are available on the Woodland Hills Church podcast (follow the link on the left under Theo's Podcast Picks). The first message, "The Insane Importance of Prayer," introduces the ideas. But it is "Scorpions, Eggs, and Prayer" which really begins to get at the heart of this issue.

He asks, "Why is it that Jesus promises that if someone asks for an egg the Father will not give them a scorpion but that sometimes it looks exactly that way?" Sometimes bad things happen to us even when we pray that they do not. He examines two classic answers in that message. The first is that it was God's will for us to endure the problem. The second is that our faith was insufficient. In Greg's words: "The first is God's fault, the second is our fault." Both of these answers he finds insufficient.

Boyd's answer is that both of these answers are too simplistic. They attribute all causes of effects to only one variable. In the first case, that everything which happens is the will of God, the only variable is God's will. This means that there is no freedom and the system is closed. This is Calvinism at its worst--but it is still the answer of choice even for many of my Arminian friends. In the second case, that everything which happens is dependent on my faith, the only variable is FAITH.

Here is a great example he uses. Say that a parent prays that his child, who has grown to adulthood and left the faith, is saved--or comes to the Lord. Say, then, that the child never does. He rejects God his entire life and finally dies in a cruel accident. The parent had prayed for years, but now there is tragedy. Why did God say "No?"

The one influenced by Calvinism will say that either we can't understand it, or there are things we don't see, or we must simply trust God. His ways are not our ways. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

But is this the only answer? Why not answer that in an open system it isn't only God's will that decides what is to pass? God has created a system in which the child could always choose which way he could go. As much as God may work on an issue, it may be that his will was thwarted by the free decision of the child.

The bottom line is that in an open system, God's will is not always the one that comes to pass. It can't always be. Sometimes what God wants to happen DOESN'T happen! People often say to me, "If God wants it to happen, it will happen." Well, sin happens, did God want that to happen? If someone sins, does that mean God wanted it to happen? If someone rapes someone, does God want THAT to happen? I think not. God's will is not the only variable. Furthermore, the interconnectedness of events makes knowledge of why any event happens absolutely impossible.

Now, I know this smacks of a theodicy. And maybe it is. And, in strictly theological circles I would affirm that theodicy-making is not always an appropriate endeavor. Yet, on a practical level, when Christians endure these things, the questions cannot be avoided. There must be an answer which arises from scripture to comfort people in the face of their suffering. To my mind it is the suffering Savior. To many Christians, it is the ultimate plan of God. To others, it is the absence or presence of faith among the believers. If this post is a theodicy, so be it. But I think it is the only TRUE theodicy. The other answers are speculation and defense. I am appealing to the cross, not to a speculation about "God's ultimate plan!"

I highly, HIGHLY, recommend Boyd's recent sermons on prayer. Go download them today.