I
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have been preoccupied for a great deal of time
with human beings. I’m fascinated by our complexities and – conversely – often
frustrated by our complications. We’re one hell of a metaphysical variety.
What are we?
What makes us tick?
It’s a truism to note
the variety evident in the human race. There are many physical, cultural,
religious (etc.) contours that testify to our distinctions. Trust me – you
can’t walk down Hollywood Boulevard without noticing how many types of people
there are.
And yet…
There is something
that unites us. We’re all human beings.
Which brings me back
to my original question: what are we? What is a human being?
My early thoughts
about human nature revolved around somewhat mundane classifications. I
voluntarily accepted much of the “folk-ontology” that I had grown up with.
Human beings were essentially something like a spirit that indwelt a body – two
separate and distinct entities. Jesus was all about getting my spirit saved via
his “spiritual” redemption. I suppose I thought my body was important. It
helped me interact with other people and I certainly liked the benefits I
received from having a body (i.e. the pleasure of eating a good meal or seeing
a beautiful sunset), but I didn’t consider my body essential to who I was. It
was something of an extremity.
I liked that
perspective. It was so naïve, but so satisfying. I could sleep at night.
In late high school
and early college, my thoughts began to change. I was introduced to the great
Greeks (i.e. Plato and Aristotle). Something about them felt marginally safe.
They posited something similar to the “folk-ontology” of my early years, but
they seemed to take things a step further. They talked about something like a relationship
between “spirit” (i.e. soul) and “matter” (i.e. body). While Plato conceived of
this spirit/matter pairing as unfortunate, Aristotle suggested a necessary
metaphysical link between the two – soul gave form to matter. Whatever I made
of these ideas at that point, I couldn’t help but feel like my simplistic
conception of human nature was expanding. Thoughts of “necessary relation” or
“form” had never entered my mind. Maybe, per Aristotle, we had a body for a
reason. Maybe…
At any rate, I was
intrigued. These ideas stuck a chord with me and I jumped on board the
substance dualist wagon. Looking back, I was surely confused concerning which
wagon I was on exactly – my conflation of important distinctions was remarkable
– but I was confident that I was (probably) most essentially my soul but now
with some important relationship with a body. At this point I was still,
however, most convinced of an asymmetrical relationship between body and soul
where the soul influences the body, but not vice versa.
Through the end of
college and into my first year of seminary, I don’t think much changed. I was
getting more comfortable on my substance-dualist wagon and didn’t foresee any
need to get off.
Unfortunately, I kept
reading books.
Word to the wise: If
you ever want to maintain you perspective on something, don’t read books.
Most
notably, I read two books: Bodies and
Souls, or Spirited Bodies by Nancey Murphy and Body, Soul & Life Everlasting by John W. Cooper.
Both
of these authors come from notably different points of view. Murphy is
Professor of Christian Philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary and Cooper is
a long-time Professor of Philosophical Theology at Calvin Theological Seminary.
Nevertheless, both of them played a part in coaxing me towards the next step in
my thoughts about human nature.
Murphy’s
book explores the implications of recent scientific and philosophical advances
concerning human persons. Given her interpretation of the data, she concludes
that non-reductive physicalism best accounts for what human beings are. On her
view, our bodies are essential to being human. Without them we do not exist.
That thing we used to call the “soul” (i.e. the epicenter of human-ness) is
actually unnecessary to posit. Our
physical brain gives rise to “immaterial” mental states that supervene on us. Given
her understanding, if we can explain where immaterial thoughts come from
without the soul, then we don’t need the soul any longer. Well, whether or not
this perspective actually works is another story (In fact, I think this theory
runs into some difficulties – especially in relation to personal identity over
time and biblical testimony on the afterlife.). Nevertheless, It motivated me
to reconsider some of my, at that point, engrained opinions about human beings.
Maybe
we’re not essentially our souls.
Cooper,
on the other hand, provided me with an enlightening read of Scripture sans dualistic presuppositions. His
explication of Old Testament data helped me see the Jewish holistic perspective
on human beings. On their view, a human being is not a circumstantial
concurrence of spirit and matter, but a complex unity of ‘apar and nephesh/ruach. There is such a tight unity between the body and spirit that
one might even understand them to be mutually dependent. Again, whether or not
Cooper is exactly right on all of
this biblical interpretation (although, I suspect he might be) is somewhat
secondary for me. At the end of the day, he stirred something transformative in
the way I think about us as human beings.
Maybe
we’re not essentially our souls.
At
this point, I think I might count myself as a functional holist. Cooper
introduced me to this language and I find it satisfactory. As a functional
holist, I believe that human beings are naturally
embodied beings. We were created to exist in that way. This does away with any
gnostic denigration of physicality. Nevertheless, there is still a non-physical
part of who we are as human beings. Scripture makes it difficult to deny the
unembodied state of some persons post-death. And I’ve yet to be convinced of
either immediate resurrection theories or substitute body theories for the
intermediate state. Maybe one day they’ll win me over, but for now it seems
that something unembodied exists post-death that is identical with the embodied
human person pre-death, so I have to accept something non-physical in order to
jive with that.
I
suppose I’m rambling now, so I’ll wrap it up.
I
guess I’m happy.
I’m
happy that I see the value of the body. I’m happy to see that (in some way) I
am my body. I’m happy to appreciate the fact that my body can influence my
spirit/soul in some meaningful way. I’m
happy to see how my body can instantiate God’s Kingdom in the physical world.
Here's to the future and what new ideas it will bring.
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For more reading on the topic of embodiment, check out my friend's article here: http://theotherjournal.com/2013/11/25/reenchanting-the-body/
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