These Summer Institutes, probably the largest and most complex conferences seen in the cities and universities of Oxford and Cambridge, offer a unique and intentional blend of worship, scholarship, and the arts in a “mere Christian” context for scholars, clergy, professionals, and laypersons around the globe.  Academics serving in Christian and secular institutions report that these Summer Institutes rank among the very finest of conferences, experiences that have transformed their approach to their work and their life in the academy.

The theme of the Oxbridge 2008 Philosophy Symposium was Self, Soul, and the Imago Dei: Philosophical Perspectives on the Search for Meaning. The symposiasts who attended this event discussed theological and philosophical issues of the sort that C.S. Lewis addressed: What does it mean to say that human beings are created in the image of God? Can naturalistic philosophies do justice to the religious dimension of human nature? Does a meaningful life require self-sacrificial love? Does atheism allow for meaningful lives? If so, could existence in a Godless world be as meaningful as life in a world created by God? Is morality relative to human conventions or does it require a transcendent divine reality? What account of the soul and its relation to the body allows for the continuation of life after death?

The four essays published here are representative of the larger collection of papers presented and discussed at the Symposium. The authors of these four articles are each Christian philosophers who teach at a university, college, or seminary in the United States or the United Kingdom. Their papers address different aspects of the Oxbridge 2008 Philosophy Symposium theme.

John Cooper is Professor of Philosophical Theology at Calvin Theological Seminary. His article is entitled, “The Image of God, Religion, and the Meaning of Life: Toward a Christian Philosophical Anthropology.” Cooper argues that the scientific naturalism of the New Atheists and others is both unfounded and inadequate to account for the religious nature of human existence. He draws on Scripture and Christian theology to formulate an account of the image of God that makes this property central to the meaning of human life. He then employs this conception of the imago dei to develop a philosophical anthropology that, he argues, is more adequate to the religious nature of human beings than a purely scientific and naturalistic view could be. He calls the theory of human nature he favors “dualistic holism.”

Kevin Kinghorn, Associate Professor of Philosophy, at Asbury Theological Seminary and Philosophy Tutor for Undergraduates at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, is the author of “The Human Search for the ‘Good Life.’” In this essay, Kinghorn identifies our pursuit of meaning with the search for “the good life.” He argues that a good life can be experienced only through a self-giving love that focuses on the welfare of others. He then critically discusses C.S. Lewis’s case in The Four Loves for the value of alternative kinds of love that do not necessarily involve a desire to benefit others. After arguing that Lewis does not show that a “welfarist” approach to the good life is incorrect, Kinghorn suggests that Lewis’s own account of agape love would be improved by reconstruing the natural loves in welfarist terms.

The author of the third essay is Scott Shalkowski. He is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Leeds. In his article “Self, Meaning, and the World,” Shalkowski provides a thorough argument against the ethical relativist claim that morality is determined by human beings (that “Man is the measure of all things” as the ancient philosopher Protagoras put it). His case is aimed primarily at recent attempts by ethical relativists to account for moral objectivity without appealing to moral facts that exist independent of human attitudes. Among Shalkowski’s objections to relativism are that it cannot explain moral disagreement, moral reformers, or moral progress. He concludes by defending theistic accounts of morality from the classic “Euthyphro Dilemma” and by arguing that theism explains morality better than naturalism can.

I, James E. Taylor, am a Professor of Philosophy at Westmont College, and I am the author of “Physicalism, Dualism, Death, and Resurrection.” I reply to Christian physicalist claims that the attitudes in Scripture about death and resurrection make more sense from a physicalist perspective than from a dualist one. Physicalists claim that physicalism makes death a greater evil and resurrection a greater good than dualism does. I argue that it is reasonable to doubt these claims on the grounds that, for all we know at present, (1) the dualist scenario of post-mortem disembodiment may be at least as bad as the physicalist consequence of temporary annihilation, and (2) resurrection may be at least as good given dualism as it is given physicalism.

Readers of this journal acquainted with Lewis’s work will recognize some of his primary philosophical and theological concerns in these four essays. Collectively, they involve both a critique of viewpoints antithetical to the Christian worldview – primarily naturalism and relativism – and an affirmation of central Christian values – especially self-giving love and eternal life. Clearly, the pursuit of truth in which Lewis was engaged continues to inspire others to follow his lead.

Protagoras

The Pre-Socratic philosopher Protagoras famously is to have said that man is the measure of all things. Christian philosophers have resisted the Protagorean position. The source of resistance is not hard to find. At least some things are not up to us; we do not measure them; we do not set their boundaries or scope; we do not have choices in some matters, which perhaps we should were we the measure of all things. Christians maintain that not only the cosmos and its orderings, but also the moral domain is something to which we are answerable, not the other way around.

To begin, note a currently fashionable criticism of religious theoretical frameworks, particularly Christianity. It is alleged that Christianity is an arrogant religion because it puts humanity at the centre of all of creation. Theologically, it is dubious that Christian theology involves any claim regarding the centrality of humans to all of creation. If God created to exhibit divine grace, as claimed in Romans, then creation is more likely for God’s sake, than it is for ours. Exhibiting grace may be one of the reasons for creation, but it need not be even the central reason. Furthermore, even if the prospect of exhibiting magnanimous grace is itself central to God’s creative intentions, it does not yet follow that humans are central to the particular project. For all Romans says, there may be other much more significant exhibitions of divine grace than all of what is extended to us. The story of human redemption need not be even the lion’s share of the story of divine grace. What is more, even if creatures sufficiently like us are necessary components of that creative project, the human race itself is not necessary for that project. We may be, at best, a minor part in the entire creative scheme of things. If there is arrogance in Christianity, it is not to do with the place of humans in creation. We are cosmically insignificant to begin with; we have been ruined by their own hands; and we are saved while undeserving by one under no obligation to save. Those are key components of the Christian message, meaning that one who hears human arrogance in Christian theology is not listening. If there is arrogance afoot, it is in the Protagorean programme and its successors. That is not an argument against the Protagorean programme, merely a plea for truth in advertising. I am interested in the question of arrogance only to show it to be thoroughly unfounded as a criticism of Christian theology and, now, to set it aside. The far more important concern is whether some version of the Protagorean project is tenable.

Protagoras’s programme begins with two components: (1) we measure things and (2) when we do so we are correct in our measurements. You say it’s hot; I say it’s cold. Hot-for-you entails that it is hot; cold-for-me entails that it is cold. Qualities like hot and cold are, then, subjective. Truth, beauty, justice, and virtue are qualities, too. Hot and cold are qualities of ovens, truth and falsity are qualities of beliefs, beauty and ugliness are qualities of art, justice and injustice are qualities of courts, while virtue and vice are qualities of agents. The relativity of hot and cold shows the relativity of qualities, which in turn, entails the relativity of truth, beauty, justice, and virtue. Of this list, we, many generations later, may be content to think that judgements of beauty are judgements of taste and preferences, but few are willing to think of truth, justice, and virtue as merely matters of taste and preference.

Much of the subsequent history of Western philosophy has been consumed with discerning the scope of the objective. The subjectivity of preferences about ice cream might be fine, but both pragmatic and intellectual chaos threaten to ensue, if not only do all do what is right in their own eyes, but even more so if it is right that they do so. Your preference for one kind of ice cream does nothing to delegitimate my ice cream preference, whatever it may be. Likewise, on this development of the Protagorean programme, neither does your assessment of qualities, including moral qualities, delegitimate mine.[1] That all are correct has the apparently happy consequence that none are wrong, but since our correct judgements sometimes conflict, actions cannot be harmonised in any corporate manner. Two people correctly pursuing justice may correctly do all within their powers to thwart the other’s pursuit of “the same” goal. This is neither a recipe for success nor is it a clear marker that we are genuinely pursing the same goal, under our current understandings of ‘same’ in this context.

The history of science is a history of finding what is objective about the cosmos. We developed measuring devices, but the development of such devices enables us to harmonise our judgements about temperature and actions regarding the central heating only if we previously concede that we are not each the measure of all things. If we retain the Protagorean programme, we conclude not that one (or both) of us is wrong in our judgements regarding warmth; we conclude that 17° C. is both hot and cold. The room is 17° C. The room is hot because you judge that it is. The room is cold because I judge that it is. The conclusion follows validly. It is doubtful that there are cogent arguments to move someone from relativism, save showing individual relativists that they are not—not really—relativists about some domain about which they care. If they are not also content to maintain contradiction involving that component of their thought and/or conduct, their advocacy of universal relativism crumbles. If they concede that it crumbles in one domain, it is easier to get it to crumble in others.

Plato, again famously, argued that while there is insufficient objectivity in the physical world of change—and, hence, no knowledge of that world—there is sufficient objectivity in the abstract world of the Forms or Ideas or Ideals. Some theists treated these as somewhat less abstract, even if not physical, by maintaining that this objectivity was located in the mind of God. Not all are content with either solution. David Hume wished to think about morals in a way that provided understanding of how morals are not only objective but also connected with human motivation so that judging something to be right automatically provided one with a reason to advocate or to do that thing (Hume, 1751/1957) (Hume, 1888/1975). The main question for the remainder of this discussion is whether an adequate route to objectivity is open to advocates of the Humean variation of the Protagorean programme.

The Christian tradition’s understanding of a good life involves us being in loving relationships with God and with others.  Because we are created in the image of a Trinitarian God, our lives go well for us inasmuch as our relationships mirror the self-giving relationships among the members of the Trinity.  This account of well-being is what moral philosophers call “perfectionist” in nature.  Perfectionist theories of well-being present a specified ideal for all humans; and the extent to which a person’s life is a good one is the extent to which the person’s life exemplifies this specified ideal.  So, on a Christian perfectionist theory of the good life, all people’s well-being ultimately rises and falls with the state of their relationships with others.

I shall not give arguments for the plausibility of this Christian account of well-being (although I think such arguments do exist).  Instead, I’ll simply take it as a starting point.  I want to focus on what we can do to enter into the kinds of relationships which mirror the relationships within the Trinity, so that our lives ultimately go well for us.

Christians have always understood the kind of love exhibited by the persons of the Trinity to be a self-giving love: a love which seeks to honour and glorify the other.  As we look to mirror these relationships, we see that Jesus indicated that “no greater love has a man than this: that he lay down his life for a friend.”  And St. Paul, in writing about love, reminds us that love is not “self-seeking”.  So, one way to spell out the nature of ideal relationships—i.e., the ones enjoyed by the members of the Trinity and, accordingly, the ones in which we flourish—is to stress how each person focuses on the other person’s well-being.  (And if our response to God is not best understood in terms of God’s well-being, then we might talk in terms of serving God, glorifying God, honouring God, committing to God’s agenda for the world.)  On the question of how we enter into these God-like relationships, the natural answer would seem to be that we simply focus on the welfare of others.  It’s as simple as that.  Or so I want to argue.

A good many philosophers and other writers have argued that things are not in fact quite as simple as that.  (And it’s true that there are innumerable details that would need to get fleshed out in terms of the relationship between others’ welfare and our own.  But I do agree with the simple thesis as a general thesis; and for the purposes of this paper, I’m going to defend it in its simple form.)  In C. S. Lewis’s work The Four Loves we find what seem to be three reasons for thinking that healthy, loving relationships are not simply a matter of each person focusing on the well-being of the other person.  These three reasons stem from Lewis’s comments on (1) Appreciative love, (2) Eros, and (3) Friendship.  In what follows I want to argue that Lewis’s possible objections to our simple thesis do not in the end prevail.  And instead, it is Lewis’s remarks on these natural loves that need to be revised a bit.  Specifically, I shall argue that Lewis understates the role of personal welfare in his various discussions of the natural loves.  I shall then suggest that, once we make the proper link between welfare and the natural loves, Lewis’s key point about the supreme, Christian love of Charity is actually strengthened.

Appreciative love: Do we focus on intrinsic qualities instead of welfare?

The first challenge from Lewis’s writings comes from his description of Appreciative love, which plays a role in the three natural loves of Affection, Friendship, and (especially) Eros.  The simple thesis which I want to defend understands God-like love to be a matter of pursuing the other person’s well-being.  But Appreciative love, as Lewis describes it, is a love that does not focus on the welfare of either ourselves or the other person.  Rather, we love another person with an Appreciative love when we appreciate the intrinsic qualities of the person—above and beyond any personal feelings or pleasures we (or they) derive from interacting with the person.  Appreciative love, by its nature, applies equally to impersonal objects as to other people.  Lewis says that when we appreciate other objects or people, “They make us feel that something has not merely gratified our senses in fact but claimed our appreciation by right.”[1]

Lewis here is challenging the thesis of Welfarism.  Welfarism insists that there is a conceptual connection between “the good” and people’s welfare.  Something can only be good if it is good for some person (or for some other sentient creature or divine being).  I myself think the thesis of Welfarism has a great deal of intuitive appeal.  If you were to recount approvingly to me how it was “good” that some event occurred, but you could not identify anyone who benefited from the event, I am not sure why I should share your sense of approval that led you to call the event “good”.  Conversely, if you lamented the occurrence of a “bad” event, but you could not identify a single person whose flourishing was in any way diminished, I am not sure why I should think of the event as a “bad” thing.

But Lewis (and a good number of other philosophers) have argued that this Welfarist intuition does not do justice to the attitudes we have toward fine art, fine music, and other things which supposedly have intrinsic value.  Here is an example Lewis gives:

The connoisseur does not merely enjoy his claret as he might enjoy warming his feet when they were cold.  He feels that here is a wine that deserves his full attention; that justifies all the tradition and skill that have gone to its making and all the years of training that have made his own palate fit to judge it.  There is even a glimmering of unselfishness in his attitude….Even if he were on his death-bed and was never going to drink wine again, he would be horrified at the thought of this vintage being spilled or spoiled or even drunk by clods (like myself) who can’t tell a good claret from a bad.[2]

And again in talking about feelings of Appreciative love,

It is the feeling which would make a man unwilling to deface a great picture even if he were the last man left alive and himself about to die; which makes us glad of unspoiled forests that we shall never see….We do not merely like the things; we pronounce them, in a momentarily God-like sense, “very good”.[3]

Lewis is certainly correct that we appreciate the qualities in a fine wine or a fine piece of art.  But the key question is whether these qualities have intrinsic value which we merely recognize as “very good”.  I want to argue that these qualities are not intrinsically good, but rather are good inasmuch as they are good for us (or for others).

Consider Lewis’s example of the claret.  Presumably, the connoisseur enjoys it because he is able to detect subtle flavours and aromas, and these sensations evoke mental images of lavender fields and hot summer breezes and whatever else connoisseurs think about when they are swishing wine around in their mouths.  But it seems to me an entirely contingent matter that humans should be roused by such things.  Many Americans were introduced as children to Tang, a powder which, when mixed with water, yields a very sweet, artificially orange-flavoured drink.  Those who are familiar both with Tang and with expensive clarets will no doubt tend to prefer the latter.  But what if the human senses of taste and smell were such that we could detect the subtle ingredient changes that take place among factories that manufacture Tang?  What if we could detect whether factories mixed ingredients in copper pots or aluminium pots?  Gatherings of connoisseurs in high-end society might debate the merits of particular packages of Tang.  Although this scenario might initially seem silly, the fact is that it is an entirely contingent matter that humans should be roused more by the aromas of lavender fields and wind-swept valleys than by the aromas of copper pots and indoor factories.  So, I do not think there is any value intrinsic to a glass of claret which we simply recognize as good—over and above the way it is good for us in certain respects.

Perhaps the critic might still insist that some pieces of artwork and music simply contain more complexity than others.  Mahler’s second symphony, for instance, contains innumerably more chord progressions and melody motifs than does Elvis Presley’s Blue Suede Shoes.  However, it again seems an entirely contingent matter that we should judge as especially creative the surprising chord progressions and melodic turns of Mahler’s second symphony.  It is possible to imagine creatures for whom creativity is always measured by the simplicity of artwork—just as sometimes simple elegance is for us a sign of creativity.  For this society of creatures, perhaps most everyone is capable of writing long, complex symphonies—whereas only a few souls (those seen as true creative geniuses) are able to condense the complex melodies running through their heads into clear, simple tunes like Blue Suede Shoes.  And at any rate, there is still the question of why creativity should be seen as a good thing in the first place.  Creative pieces of art and music inspire us, challenge us, remind us of our commitments, and so forth.  Yet, beyond these kinds of effects which art and music have on us, we again come to the Welfarist intuition that there seems to be nothing left to commend them.

We should quickly add that, when connoisseurs cultivate their appreciation for wine or artwork, they will be focusing their attention on the qualities of the wine or artwork itself.  They will not be thinking consciously about the enjoyment they are personally receiving from their pursuits.  But this fact does not undermine the conclusion that their own enjoyment is indeed giving rise to the favourable attitude they have toward the objects in question.  It is a well-known phenomenon that people can often best enhance their own well-being by focusing their attention on things other than their own well-being.  While playing a game of basketball, I will enjoy myself if I concentrate on the game and say to myself, “Make the basket; make the basket.”  By contrast, if I keep saying to myself, “Enjoy the moment more; enjoy the moment more!”, my experiences will not be as enjoyable.

C. S. Lewis recognized a similar point in talking about how we enjoy gardens.

Say your prayers in a garden early, ignoring steadfastly the dew, the birds and the flowers, and you will come away overwhelmed by its freshness and joy; go there in order to be overwhelmed and, after a certain age, nine times out of ten nothing will happen to you.[4]

What is important for our purposes is the point that we can most enjoy a walk in the garden or a game of basketball when we’re not consciously focused on the enjoyment we are drawing from it.  At the same time, the reason some people take walks in gardens and play basketball—while others prefer different pursuits—is that they enjoy these things.  So in the end, it again seems that what is good about garden walks or other pursuits is the effects these things have on us, even if these pursuits affect us most when we focus on the pursuits themselves.

Appreciative love can involve the recognition that something has qualities which are instrumentally good in that they lead to someone’s enhanced welfare.  But I think we should side with the Welfarist who insists that intrinsic goodness is confined to the well-being of people (and other creatures and divine beings) who are capable of having a welfare.  Accordingly, we remain free to spell out the nature of moral decisions in terms of whose welfare we seek to promote.  This was our original, simple thesis.  Given that Lewis does not demonstrate that intrinsic value exists apart from people’s welfare, his remarks on Appreciative love do not serve to undermine our simple thesis.

Eros: Do we desire the beloved him/herself, apart from anyone’s welfare?

Lewis’s discussion of Eros provides a second possible challenge to our simple thesis that ideal, loving relationships involve each person pursuing the others’ well-being as his ultimate goal.  Eros, as Lewis describes it, does not have as its simple goal the well-being of the beloved; that goal would be more in line with Charity, which we’ll discuss later.  And Eros does not have as its goal one’s own well-being.  Lewis declares, “In some mysterious but quite indisputable fashion the lover desires the Beloved herself, not the pleasure she can give.”[5]

I do, however, want to dispute this idea of ‘desiring the Beloved’, as I am not sure how to make sense of it.  Admittedly, Lewis’s description of Appreciative love relies on the idea of desiring an object for its own sake.  And Lewis does see Appreciative love as an important element within Eros.  But Eros extends beyond Appreciative love.  Whereas appreciative love identifies intrinsic worth in the object, Lewis describes Eros as, again, “desiring the Beloved”.  And presumably this desire is not necessarily proportionate to the intrinsic value of the qualities we identify in the Beloved.

In arguing that “Eros does not aim at happiness,”[6] Lewis offers the following observation.

Everyone knows that it is useless to try to separate lovers by proving to them that their marriage will be an unhappy one….For it is the very mark of Eros that when he is in us we had rather share unhappiness with the Beloved than be happy on any other terms.  Even if the two lovers are mature and experienced people who know that broken hearts heal in the end and can clearly foresee that, if they once steeled themselves to go through the present agony of parting, they would almost certainly be happier ten years hence than marriage is at all likely to make them—even then, they would not part….Even when it becomes clear beyond all evasion that marriage with the Beloved cannot possibly lead to happiness—when it cannot even profess to offer any other life than that of tending an incurable invalid, of hopeless poverty, of exile, or of disgrace—Eros never hesitates to say, “Better this than parting.  Better to be miserable with her than happy without her.”[7]

There are a couple ways we might plausibly interpret the behaviour Lewis describes, though these ways do not serve to undermine our simple thesis about focusing on people’s welfare.  First, when Lewis talks about a life of “tending an incurable invalid”, we can imagine a case of altruistic love where a person sacrifices his own well-being in order to promote the well-being of the Beloved.  But this case would be a kind of Charity; and Lewis means to distinguish Eros from Charity.  So, this interpretation of altruism will not help Lewis make his point about “desiring the Beloved”.

A second plausible interpretation of Lewis’s examples also will not help him make his point.  When Lewis talks about lovers refusing to part company, even with both of them knowing that in the long run they will both be better off if they do part, he points to an interesting fact about human nature.  But this fact seems to be a more general point about prudence, rather than anything particular to love relationships where we somehow “desire the Beloved”.  It is a generally accepted fact that we are quite capable of sacrificing our perceived long-term best interests for the sake of lesser, immediate enjoyments.  For example, flipping through the television channels late one evening, you may find a B-movie playing which you’ve previously seen.  Knowing that you must get up early for work the next morning, you recognize that, all things considered, you will be better off by going to bed immediately and getting a good night’s sleep.  And yet, you may well stay up to watch the movie, lamenting this fact both when you finally do go to bed and, especially, when your alarm clock goes off the next morning.  Imprudence is a matter of preferring lesser, immediate well-being to greater, long-term well-being.  And if imprudence explains why two lovers stay together while knowing that their long-term better interests lie elsewhere, then the struggle is not, as Lewis suggests, between welfare and some desire “for the Beloved”.  Rather, the struggle is between short-term well-being and greater, long-term well-being.

Once we set aside the interpretation of an altruistic desire for the Beloved’s welfare, as well as the imprudent desire for one’s own lesser, immediate welfare, it becomes difficult to make sense of the idea of “desiring the Beloved” (beyond the idea of Appreciative love, which we critiqued in the previous section).  So, Lewis’s remarks on the nature of Eros do not, as far as I can see, give us reason to revise our simple thesis that an ideal, loving relationships exists as each person focuses on the welfare of the other.

Friendship: Can it exist without considerations of welfare?

A third challenge to our simple thesis comes from Lewis’s comments on the nature of friendship.  Specifically, Lewis describes how friendships arise: “Friendship…is born at the moment when one man says to another, ‘What!  You too?  I thought that no one but myself…’”[8]  The suggestion seems to be that we can at least begin to have friendships before even contemplating such things as whether we will promote the other person’s welfare instead of our own.  And inasmuch as friendships increase our well-being, then the implication seems to be that we can in some respects find a “good life” without having to concern ourselves with questions of promoting people’s interests above our own.

Lewis is certainly correct in pointing out that the discovery of shared interests can have a positive impact on us.  Indeed, there can be powerful healing qualities that come with meeting a stranger who at least understands—even if he does not fully share—our concerns and point of view.  But I would suggest that the reason such experiences have a positive impact on us is that they lead us to anticipate the kind of ideal, loving relationship in which our well-being truly consists.  The discovery itself that someone understands us is not sufficient to make our lives go better for us.  If you were to discover that a stalker had been collecting data on the intimate details of your life, you would feel unnerved, not comforted.  And the recognition that others share your interests, if accompanied by the knowledge that they mean to exclude you from gatherings where they pursue these interests, will be more bitter than sweet.  Any encouragement we experience upon finding that others share our interests and pursuits is linked with our thought that they are treating us in loving, collegial ways that serve to end, not extend, our feelings of isolation.  And our excitement upon finding a new friend involves our contemplation of future cooperative projects.  Even within established friendships, relationships remain positive as they develop only if further discoveries about the person do not uncover areas where the other person is prepared to sacrifice our well-being to his own.

So, the positive feelings we associate with a friendship stem from our belief that we are—or will be—in a relationship marked by mutual concern for the other person.  Lewis’s comments on Friendship help us see a certain context in which we can enjoy self-giving relationships.  But his comments do not undermine our original, simple thesis that ideal relationships are indeed marked by self-giving commitments.

Charity: Strengthening the role of this supreme love

Thus far I have argued that Appreciative love does not actually exist, at least as Lewis seems to view it.  I have argued that Eros must make reference to people’s well-being if it is to make sense, and that Friendship impacts us positively inasmuch as it presupposes that the other person has some commitment to our well-being.  I want now to argue that these suggested, Welfarist revisions to Lewis’s thoughts on the natural loves can serve to strengthen the central point he wants to make about the nature of Charity, the supremely Christian love.

In describing the nature of Charity, Lewis states that “In God there is…only plenteousness that desires to give”[9] and that “Divine Gift-love…is wholly disinterested and desires what is simply best for the beloved.”[10]  Thus far, Lewis’s description of Charity seems right in line with what our original, simple thesis affirmed: God relates to others while focused on their well-being; and as creatures in the image of God, we will achieve the good life God intends for us as we do the same.  It is Lewis’s discussion of the relationship between Charity and the natural loves which proves more difficult.

Lewis acknowledges how the three natural loves of Affection (which we’ve not discussed), Friendship, and Eros will ultimately fail us unless they are transformed by Charity.  He provides terrific insights into how this can happen.  The beauty of the outdoors can “die on” the lover of nature; and family Affection, Friendship, and Eros can all become twisted and self-destructive.  These things happen, says Lewis, when they “become gods” to us—that is, when we treat them like the highest ideals of love.

To prevent these loves from being deified such that they actually become “demons” for us, Lewis emphasizes that they must be transformed by Charity.

The invitation to turn our natural loves into Charity is never lacking.  It is provided by those frictions and frustrations that meet us in all of them; unmistakable evidence that (natural) love is not going to be “enough”.[11]

Lewis’s phrase of “turning our natural loves into Charity” may lead us to think that Charity somehow replaces the natural loves of Affection, Friendship, and Eros.  But Lewis is clear that this is not how we should conceive of transformation.

the Divine Love does not substitute itself for the natural—as if we had to throw away our silver to make room for the gold.  The natural loves are summoned to become modes of Charity while also remaining the natural loves they were….As Christ is perfect God and perfect Man, the natural loves are called to become perfect Charity and also perfect natural loves.[12]

At this point Lewis’s position becomes a bit unclear.  It is not at all obvious how the natural loves—Affection, Friendship and Eros—can both remain and become the love of Charity.  Either one’s ultimate concern in relating to someone else is the well-being of that other person—which is the hallmark of Christ-like Charity—or it is not.  If it is, then it is unclear how Lewis means for us to think of the natural loves as remaining.  After all, Lewis describes the natural loves as involving desires and appreciations which are not tied to anyone’s well-being.

But I have argued that the natural loves are in fact tied to well-being.  Whether it is Appreciative love, Eros, or Friendship, I have argued that the attractions and value placements inherent in the natural loves are ultimately rooted in the thought that someone’s welfare is enhanced.  My suggestion now is that we should view the natural loves as leading strings of Divine grace which provide us with motivations to pursue other people’s well-being.  (Similarly, moral reasoning can provide an impetus for personalities like Immanuel Kant to promote other people’s well-being.)  Whereas the natural loves serve as types of motivation, Charity is not so much a kind of motivation as a Christ-like goal: namely, the goal that other people’s lives go well for them.

Our original, simple thesis was that ideal, Christ-like relationships are established when each person seeks to promote the other person’s welfare.  This is the goal of Charity.  A goal, of course, can be pursued for different reasons.  The natural loves provide differently nuanced motivations to pursue this single, Christ-like goal of Charity.  This understanding of the relationship between Charity and the natural loves would allow Lewis quite easily to explain how Charity reigns supreme in the life of the maturing Christian, even though the natural loves are not so much replaced by Charity as they are transformed by Charity.  They are transformed in the sense that they serve as motivation in the life of the Christian to perform acts of service for the sake of others, instead of serving as motivations to pursue selfish ends by the person who places his own well-being above others.  The motivations associated with the natural loves are given to all of us by God.  How we use them depends on whose interests we choose to focus on.  Of course the great paradox of the Christian faith is that, when we “lose our life” in self-giving focus on God and others, we find that our own well-being has indeed increased.  (We discussed earlier how we can often increase our well-being by focusing on things other than our well-being.)

In summary, my suggestion in our earlier discussions of the natural loves was that Lewis understates how the feelings we associate with Appreciative love, Eros, and Friendship involve considerations of someone’s welfare.  And with a more Welfarist understanding of the natural loves, we can see them as divine leading strings, as motivations, which prompt us to join God in the charitable pursuit of others’ well-being, thereby attaining the “good life” God has designed for us.

This paper notes the challenge of scientific naturalism to religion and Christianity and briefly denies that naturalism is supported by science.  It then outlines an alternative perspective in two stages.  The first is an account of the biblical doctrine of the image of God as the essence and meaning of human life.  Based on the first, the second stage outlines a Christian philosophical anthropology that challenges scientific naturalism by articulating the essentially religious nature of human life.

A: The Challenge of Scientific Naturalism

The theme of Oxbridge 2008–the image of God, the self, and the search for meaning–is a profound engagement of the perennial philosophy–the universal human quest for wisdom—by the specific claims of Jesus Christ, who is “the very image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15) and “the wisdom of God” (I Cor.1:24).  The wisdom of Socrates urges us to know ourselves, but Jesus teaches us that we cannot find ourselves without following him (Mt. 16:24ff).

The human search for wisdom is universal, but its results are strikingly diverse.  Dissonant voices in the public square preach competing versions of wisdom apart from Christ.  Traditional religions flourish and new spiritualities proliferate.  Humanist philosophies, political ideologies, and hedonistic life-styles promise happiness and fulfillment.   While billions are persuaded by one or another claim to wisdom, cynics continue to sneer and seekers still search.

In the midst of this spiritual cacophony, Oxbridge 2008 addresses a particularly strident voice—contemporary scientific naturalism.  Naturalism’s most popular preachers, the so-called New Atheists, rant against religion in general and Christianity in particular, alleging that they are not merely irrational and irrelevant but harmful to human flourishing.  Other naturalists are more subtle, allowing that religion has been a useful adaptation in human evolution, at least until recently.  Either way, naturalism tries to explain religion without God, meaning without genuine purpose, perversity without evil, and hope without transcendence.

But none of this is new.  Naturalists since the Greeks have challenged religion in the name of reason and science.  Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and their ilk are the current generation of the modern family of naturalists–heirs of the 18^th-century French materialists, Feuerbach, Comte, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Sartre, and Russell.  Science-based atheism is nothing new.

The current generation appeals to new evidence, however–developments in genetics, neuroscience, and cybernetics.  Their claim seems to be that if robots can be programmed to pray, or religion can be explained by genetics, or if spiritual experience can be located in the brain, then the religious impulse can be explained in physical-biological terms without God, the soul, or the supernatural.

B: Response to Scientific Naturalism

The counter-challenge to scientific naturalism is not mounted by Christians alone.  Generations of thinkers from many perspectives have argued that science neither establishes nor favors naturalism’s atheism, materialistic anthropology, or reductive view of religion.  I merely summarize the well-known critique.  With respect to God, science cannot justify atheistic naturalism because naturalism is a worldview whose basic claims cannot be empirically tested and are not entailed by established facts.  Furthermore, naturalism seems insufficient to explain the origin and nature of the world as we know it.  In fact the current scientific world-picture provides a basis for forceful theistic arguments.  With respect to human nature, developments in computing, genetics, and neuroscience do not corroborate physicalism, which is likewise not an empirical but a metaphysical thesis.  In fact the results of these sciences are consistent with an array of philosophies of mind, including substance dualism and spiritual monism.  In sum, a broad coalition of philosophers have concluded that current science does not vindicate naturalism or any other position inconsistent with the existence of God or the Christian faith.  Some critics even charge that naturalism’s evolutionistic epistemology undercuts it because, according to its own account, knowledge of truth is not a capacity for which evolution has selected.

Furthermore, scientifically-informed scholars of diverse religious and philosophical persuasions have developed cogent and comprehensive views of religion and anthropology that point to the reality of God, the Transcendent, the Absolute, or the Infinite as a necessary ground.  I mention, for example, William James, Rudolf Otto, A. N. Whitehead, Teilhard de Chardin, Charles Hartshorne, Paul Tillich, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, John Hick, Cantwell Smith, and Mircea Eliade.  One need not be a Christian to hold a positive, non-reductive view of religion and to regard the quest for meaning as an authentic human response to transcendent reality.  But many Christians have contributed to and benefited from this broad coalition against naturalism.

In this paper I consider religion and the human search for meaning from a distinctly Christian perspective–the biblical doctrine of the image of God and, based on it, a philosophical anthropology and philosophy of religion that challenge scientific naturalism.

II. THE IMAGE OF GOD IN SCRIPTURE

A. Introduction: A Comprehensive Summary of the Biblical Doctrine

Although the image and likeness of God are mentioned in only a few texts, their definitive importance for human nature—ours and Christ’s—is clearly taught in Scripture.  The references are strategically located in the biblical narrative and rich with doctrinal implications.

Some definitions of the image that have been offered by commentators and theologians are more limited than the biblical view.  Some relate the image to God but not to creation; or locate it in the soul but not the body; or identify it with a specific human capacity, such as reason, will, love, language, creativity, or community; or insist that it is relational and functional but not ontological; or equate it with spiritual virtues, such as love, righteousness, and holiness, but not with the human capacities for those virtues.  In contrast to these definitions, the biblical doctrine is broad–including all these aspects of human nature and more.

My account is based on the key texts located in the narrative of the biblical worldview–the creation, fall, redemption, and fulfillment of God’s earthly Kingdom.

B. Creation: the Image Relates us to God, Other Humans, and Nature

Humanity as the image of God is a central teaching of Genesis 1 and thus foundational to the rest of Scripture.  The divine image includes all of human life and has several dimensions:  It relates us to God, to other humans, and to the non-human world.  Nothing human is beyond its scope.  Thus it constitutes the generic meaning of life.  We consider each dimension in turn.

Most basically, humanity is defined in relation to God as his image and likeness.  Genesis 1 responds to the cosmic theocracies of the ancient near-eastern religions.  It proclaims that the God of Israel is the Divine King whose spirit and word created and ordered the universe, all creatures, and the whole human race.  God made humans not as slaves but as royal vassals in a covenantal relationship to flourish and serve him by ruling his earthly kingdom.

Thus Genesis 1 defines humanity as the image and likeness of God.  Being related to God constitutes and grounds the nature, place, purposes, and responsibilities of human life.  It denotes our status, vocation, activity, and goal.  Imaging God means that humans are like God both in having ability and responsibility for stewardship of the world and for reflecting the excellences of his rule—wisdom, justice, righteousness, and holiness—in the exercise of that stewardship.  Thus we are inescapably responsible to God for our lives whether we love, hate, ignore, flee, or search for him.  The image of God is the seed of religion and of the need for meaning that sprouts in all humans.

Being God’s image also relates us to other humans.  In Genesis 1 adam is not the proper name of an individual but the generic term for humankind.  The image is communal.  The human race was created male and female and blessed to procreate so that the image of God might increase and fill the earth.  Although God is not gendered or reproductive, the human genders together reflect and multiply his image.  The whole human community–not just the aggregate of individuals–bears the image of God.  Because all humanity images God, sexism, tribalism, and racism are precluded.  In addition, all the forms of human community implicit in creation—marriage, family, friendship, many kinds of organizations, societies, tribes, and nations—are facets of the image and intended to reflect the divine virtues of love, justice, and holiness.  By implication, the scope of the image in Scripture includes all of human society.

The third dimension of the image is our relation to the world or nature.  The Great King made us royal stewards, gave us a home, and blessed us with responsibility to rule the earth on his behalf (not to exploit it).  This covenantal mandate implicitly authorizes the development of means of subsistence, as well as culture and civilization in all their diverse aspects, in service and obedience to the Creator.  Food preparation, clothing, dwellings, learning, technology, music, the arts, and many other aspects of culture are ways of obeying the divine mandate that relates us to the earth and non-human creatures.

Embodiment is a corollary.  Although Genesis 1 does not speak about human composition—soul, spirit, and dust of the earth–as does Genesis 2, it clearly presents humans as earthly creatures like the animals, not as spiritual beings artificially imposed upon the earth.  To be sure, we cannot image God without the mental-spiritual abilities that animals lack–intellect, will, creativity, language, morality, religion, and so forth.  But neither can we do so without being bodily creatures of the earth.

In sum, Genesis 1 defines humans as the image of God, which includes meaningful and responsible relationships with God, the human community, and nature.

C. The Fall into Sin: Refusal, Loss, and the Residual Image of God

Genesis 3 narrates our first parents’ original sin.  They disobeyed God and sought to become like him, determining good and evil for themselves.  In the religious context of Genesis 1 and 2, this is an act of rebellion and insurrection against the Great King.  The just consequences are alienation from God, banishment from Paradise, and loss of ability to image God rightly in any part of life.  In sum, sin resulted in spiritual and physical death.

The question immediately arises whether fallen humans still bear the divine image.  Following Scripture, most church traditions and theologians affirm that fallen humans image God in a limited way.  They distinguish between the image as created and the image diminished by sin.  Let’s call them the integral image and the residual image.  The integral image is our natural capacities for imaging God and their virtuous exercise—likeness to God that Paul calls “true righteousness and holiness” (Eph.4:24).  The residual image is the impaired capacities with their potential for regeneration.

The residual image of God is the universal human essence.  All normally-developed  humans have the needs, capacities, and responsibilities for relationship with God, other humans, and nature even though we lack the desire, will, and ability to exercise them as intended by God.  We still trust and seek to serve something in place of God that promises us a good life in a peaceable kingdom.  We remain social beings and exercise dominion over creation.  But on our own, we cannot discover the meaning of life, much less achieve true love, justice, and holiness.

D. Salvation: Jesus Christ, the Perfect Image of God, Restores the Image in Us

One profoundly biblical way of understanding salvation is that God restores his fallen image-bearers by means of the perfect image of God, Jesus Christ.  For our salvation the Wisdom and Word of God became flesh and assumed our human nature, which images God.  Paul explicitly teaches that Jesus Christ “is the very image of the invisible God” through whom God reconciled all things in heaven and on earth to himself through his blood, shed on the cross (Col. 1:15-20; also 2 Cor.4:4).  Thus the true and perfect image of God is the means of salvation for humans and the whole creation.

What’s more, salvation involves renewal of our likeness to God.  Paul explicitly links salvation with restoration of the image in Ephesians 4:24 where he urges us “to put on the new nature, created in the likeness of God—true righteousness and holiness.”  Joined to Christ by the Holy Spirit, we—the image of God in us–are “new creations” (2 Cor. 5:17).  We are regenerated, reformed, and re-enabled to function as designed so that true virtue, joy, and fulfillment can be realized.  During this life we struggle against the lingering effects of our sinful nature.  The renewed image fully blossoms only in the life to come.  Meanwhile, the Spirit empowers us to become more like God in love, wisdom, righteousness, justice, and holiness in relation to him and all our earthly endeavors.

E. The Everlasting Image: Only God?

If the image is truly the essence of humanity, then we cannot lack it in eternity.  But how will we forever image God?  Theologians have proposed different ideas.  The majority position of the Christian tradition has been the beatific vision of God.  According to this doctrine, the whole community of the blessed–resurrected and situated on the new earth—will be focused entirely and exclusively on God alone, eternally full of wonder, praise, and joy.  After all, what more could any creature desire than the infinite God, the overflowing source of all good?  This is the view of Augustine, Bonaventure, Aquinas, and many traditional Protestant theologians.

Another vision of the Kingdom is analogous to a blessed life in this world.  It affirms our central focus on God but also includes active relationships with the new earth, the human community, and even with purified remnants of this world.  Although marriage and procreation will be no more, an active, embodied life with God’s people in the new earth will progress endlessly and flawlessly from glory to glory.  All of God’s original gifts to humans will be redeemed, restored, enriched, and fulfilled but never exhausted.  This is the vision of Jonathan Edwards and C. S. Lewis in The Last Battle.

The doctrine of progressive glorification seems more correct because it reflects the fullness of the image of God and because Scripture speaks of more than ceaseless worship in the Kingdom of God.  It envisions fellowship at the Supper of the Lamb, reigning with Christ, ruling cities, and marveling at the treasures of the nations in the New Jerusalem.

III. THE IMAGE OF GOD AND PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

A. A Call for Christian Philosophical Anthropology

If the image of God defines human life and its meaning comprehensively, as I have suggested, then it provides a framework for a Christian philosophical anthropology.  Philosophical anthropology is a comprehensive conception of human existence that locates and relates all its parts, dimensions, aspects, capacities, and dynamics in terms of a basic definition of the whole, such as rational animal, symbolic animal, rational-moral agent, or embodied person.  German philosophers since Kant and Hegel have developed philosophical anthropology as a distinct discipline.  But Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Hume, Marx, Freud, and many others, including scientific naturalists, have outlined philosophical anthropologies.  Books and articles pour from the presses claiming to explain human sexuality, personality, rationality, language, society, culture, morality, and religion entirely in terms of evolutionary biology, genetics, neuroscience, and/or cybernetics.

Philosophical anthropology should be an important part of the Christian response to scientific naturalism.  Analytic philosophers, understandably wary of tendentious system-building, are inclined to focus on specific issues, such as the body-mind relation, the will and action, and grounds for belief.  These contributions are important.  But I encourage us to engage in the larger project as well—putting these pieces together into a general philosophy of human nature that is shaped by biblical teaching.  Christian philosophers can construct our own theories, and/or we can help theologians refine theirs, just as we do in philosophical theology (i.e. concepts of God).  I have benefitted especially from the anthropologies of John Paul II, Wolfhart Pannenberg, and Herman Dooyeweerd, a Dutch Reformed philosopher, as well as Teilhard, Tillich, Rahner, Kung, Macquarrie, and Moltmann.

The rest of this essay outlines a philosophical anthropology based on the image of God.  The first part argues that humans are essentially religious–homo religious–and that scientific naturalism itself is a religion.  The second part sketches an overview of this anthropology, which understands humans as multi-facetted, fundamentally religious beings, and it presents theses on specific issues such as the ontology of the image, the body-soul relation, and the will.

B. The Image of God, Homo Religiosus, and the Religion of Scientific Naturalism

In the debate about human nature, virtually no one denies that humans have an impulse to search for meaning, to ponder the perennial worldview questions, and to wonder about the supernatural.  Even naturalistic atheists such as Russell, Sartre, and Dawkins concede the fact as they lament it.  What we debate are diverse explanations of this impulse, basically whether religion is a natural, essential, positive, significant response to transcendent reality, or it is merely an anxious, pointless, and unnecessary gesture toward the supernatural void.

Christians understand religion and the universal search for meaning as expressing the residual image of God.  The residual image, you recall, implies that all people are unavoidably related to God, to other humans, and to nature as we seek to flourish and live fulfilling lives.  But without divine help, we are unable to understand or to bring about what it takes to flourish and find enduring satisfaction.  In the debate with naturalists, we must make a philosophical case for these dynamics of the residual image.

The residual image of God implies that religion is natural and realistic.  This implication involves two correlative claims—that God exists, and that all normal humans have the capacity for awareness of his existence.

With respect to the existence of God, I concede that there are no compelling proofs.  But critical thinkers with various attitudes toward religion have offered a variety of arguments for God’s existence and nature that many intelligent people find persuasive, if not compelling.  Some philosophers have added that it is reasonable to believe in God even without compelling evidence if that belief is authentic, existentially important, and not rationally defeated.  In addition, denying the existence of God makes it difficult to find an ultimate explanation for the existence of the universe, the moral order, agapic love, and the absolute value of human personhood.  Whichever claim is true, theism has more ultimate explanatory power than atheism.  All things considered, it certainly seems as reasonable to affirm the existence of God as to deny it.  Naturalistic atheism cannot claim to occupy the intellectual high ground.  Philosophically, we are rationally entitled to affirm one proposition in the claim that all humans image God residually–God exists—even if we cannot prove it.

The second element of the image is that all humans have a capacity for awareness of God even if they are not intentionally religious.  It defines human nature as homo religiosus.  Scholars have presented substantive phenomenological and philosophical arguments that the religious impulse is a deep, irreducible, life-shaping aspect of human nature that senses and responds to the supernatural.[1]  Schleiermacher developed Calvin’s idea of a sensus divinitatis (awareness of divinity) as the intuition of our dependence on an absolute.  Hegel likewise argued for implicit awareness of the Absolute that is immanent in human activity in nature and history.  William James explicated a preconscious sense of our participation in the life-giving power of the universe.  Rudolf Otto pointed to an experiential capacity for encountering the holy.  Pannenberg argued for a universal intuition of infinity that bears quasi-personal characteristics. All of these theories appeal broadly to human experience and argue for implicit human awareness of a reality in and beyond the physical universe that is deeply significant for human existence.

These exercises in phenomenology of religion are not proofs that it is natural and essential, but they are substantial and forceful.  They certainly demonstrate that the reductive theories of religion presented by atheistic naturalists do not hold the intellectual high ground and are not the rational default position.  These realistic accounts of religion challenge naturalistic allegations that religion is an accidental evolutionary acquisition, a desperate psychological projection, an immature cultural practice, or a pernicious power-grab.  In fact on close analysis, religion is not reducible to or wholly explicable in terms of physical, biological, social, and/or cultural functions.[2]

A third implication of the residual image of God is that the religious impulse expresses a common basic need that we humans cannot satisfy ourselves.  According to Christian doctrine, if humans reject God, ignore him, or confuse him with something else, a “God-shaped void” is generated, as Pascal and Lewis observed, which is filled by something other than God.  Philosophically, let’s call this potentially unsatisfied basic need the existential void.  It motivates all human questing for grounding, order, meaning, goodness, and hope.  I define the religious impulse philosophically as the desire to satisfy the existential void.  A religious commitment is a human’s trusting something to fill his/her existential void.  A religious object—god or idol—is whatever a person trusts to provide a sense of grounding, order, meaning, goodness, and hope.  By this definition, religion does not necessarily involve spiritual ritual, belief in the supernatural, or hope for an afterlife.  Whether we fill the existential void with spirits, gods, one God, the God and Father of Jesus Christ, the powers of nature, the powers of humanity, or we are full of ourselves–all of us, like Augustine, seek rest for our restless hearts.  Perhaps some of us remain existentially unsatisfied and spend our lives searching.  In any case, all humans are religious according to this definition, whatever our basic beliefs, values, and commitments.  Secular humanism, scientific naturalism, and individual hedonism are just as religious as Christianity, Islam, and Wicca.

Religion is a matter of fundamental faith.  All humans live by faith simply because no one can fill the void beyond possible doubt, even if they feel certain.  We can no more prove that the Cosmos is all there is than that the God of the Bible is nearer than hands or feet.  We can appeal to religious experience, long-standing tradition, majority consensus, common sense, scientific research, and philosophical reflection, but no combination of these sources can provide objective certainty.  We all live by faith.

Finally, religion shapes the lives of all humans.  The residual image implies that humans strive to subsist, to participate in society and culture, and to understand themselves in terms of whatever fills their existential void.  Philosophically stated, humans live in terms of worldviews that they trust are true.  A worldview is a general notion of the nature and best practice of human life in relation to other things that bear on it, including the natural world, some standard of a good life, and possibly the supernatural and an afterlife.   Worldviews rest on and are shaped by beliefs about what people ultimately trust to support and promote human existence—whether supernatural, natural, or human.  There are supernatural and/or theistic worldviews, naturalistic worldviews, and humanistic worldviews of astonishing variety.  Because worldviews cannot be verified any more than religious commitments can, both are matters of faith that fill the void.  All humans live and order their lives by faith in something that we trust to ground and promote our flourishing.  A religion is a faith-based, understanding of life that is seriously practiced.

When we apply this perspective to scientific naturalism, its religious character is clear.  Scientific naturalists have faith that science is the only reliable way to find out who we are, where we are headed, how best to get on, and how to cope with what impedes the journey.  Science is their authoritative revelation.  With respect to the ultimate ground of existence, scientific naturalists trust an evolving universe and the capacities with which it has endowed humans, and they offer a program for living on that basis.

At bottom, the attack of the New Atheists against religion and Christianity is not the voice of reason against irrational faith.  It is a spiritual battle–the preachers of one religion challenging other religions with the goal of proselytizing those whose faith they can shake.  When their rhetoric is irrational, heated, slanderous, and derisive, they look like religious fundamentalists on a crusade against those whom they regard as benighted and dangerous infidels.  Christians ought not to respond in kind but with the truth in love.  Our reply should be rational even if it is not rationally compelling.  By God’s grace it might become existentially compelling for some scientific naturalists.

In this section we have illustrated how the doctrine of the image of God provides a definition of human nature for a Christian anthropology—homo religiosus, a philosophy of religion, and an apologetics, all of which can meet the challenge of scientific naturalism.

C. Theses about an Anthropology that Articulates the Image of God

1. The Image is Ontological

If Scripture implicitly defines humans as the image of God, then the image is essential and ontological, not merely accidental, functional, or relational.  Although the Bible does not teach a particular philosophy, I find it most helpful to consider the divine image as the human essence in an Aristotelian-Thomistic sense.[3]  The image is substantial, relational, functional, and teleological. It defines who we are; structures our physical-intellectual-spiritual existence accordingly; relates us unavoidably to God, other humans, and the world; empowers us with all the capacities to do what we were created to do; and orders those activities toward the goals that God gave us to achieve.  The image of God implies all of these ontological functions.

The image is generic or essential—pertaining to humanity in general.  Individual persons, like snowflakes, instantiate and actualize the essence in countless particular ways, both residually and redemptively.

Like a Thomist form or soul, the image was operative in our first parents, but it also contained great potential to be actualized in history by activities that properly image God.  The potential of the image can only be realized properly by living in love and obedience to God.  Perhaps it is practically infinite—progressing ever upward and onward but never reaching completion, even in God’s everlasting kingdom.

Strictly speaking, it is the residual image of God that is essential–present in all human beings.  The integral image that God created in our first parents has been lost.  If the created image in its integrity were essential, then fallen humans would not exemplify it.  A sick and deformed oak tree is still an oak tree.  If all humans image God, it is the residual image that they have.  This is a metaphysical point, not an existential-religious claim.  It does not imply that goodness and wholeness are incidental to human integrity, flourishing, and fulfillment.

2.  The Image is Comprehensive and Multi-dimensional: Integral Holism

I have argued that the image of God comprehends all dimensions of human existence–spirituality, morality, society, culture, and physical life.  Integral, multi-dimensional holism is the sort of conceptual scheme that best captures this view ontologically.

This integral religious holism provides a framework for a rich account of the parts, aspects, and dynamics of human nature that we know from experience and the special sciences.  Gender and sexuality, personality and character, language and communication, social, economic, and political processes, learning and technology, culture, the arts, and morality—all of these gifts are mutually enabled, mutually conditioned, mutually affective, and mutually oriented toward a focal point beyond human life.  Christian philosophical anthropology seeks to understand the rich complexity of our lives in relation to God.

A holistic anthropology of this sort has several characteristics.  First, each part, aspect, dimension, and functional capacity of human existence has its own irreducible nature, place, and functions within the whole.  Feelings, obligations, and brain events are ontologically distinct.  Second, each part and aspect is directly or indirectly connected to the others so that they are interdependent and mutually influential.  Some parts provide what is necessary for others to function and are in turn affected by their functioning.  For example, prayer and brain activity are complexly interrelated, as are financial markets, confidence, and fear.  Third, the nature of the whole is religious, which means that all the parts are ordered so that relating to God is a natural capacity, need, and activity that directly or indirectly orients and motivates how the parts are supported and operate.  Our brains are designed for basic beliefs and values that shape life, and our brains in turn are affected by how we live out our basic beliefs and values.

This anthropology is not guilty of religious reductionism.  In claiming that all of life is religious, I am not attempting to explain psychology, sociology, and morality reductively as forms of religion the way naturalists might explain them as brain functions or Freudians as sublimated psychological forces.  Reductionistic theories attempt to explain the whole in terms of a part.  My term religious refers to the whole and part in different senses.  Human nature as a whole is religious in that all of life is open toward and oriented by something that is trusted to sustain and guide it.  But religion—relating to one’s existential ground in trust, wonder, thought, praise, devotion, or some other intentional mode–is a specific kind of human activity, distinct from building a house, analyzing data, or digesting food.  The irreducible distinctness of the parts is not compromised by the religious nature of the whole.

3. The Image of God, Integral Holism, and Body, Soul, Person, and Will

An integral Christian view of human nature should frame our philosophical theories of body, soul, mind, person, and will.  This sort of coherent, comprehensive approach enhances the cogency of philosophical accounts of these topics, and it strengthens their apologetical power to encounter such challenges as scientific naturalism.  The following are general suggestions based on my reading of Scripture’s teaching about other aspects of human nature besides the image of God.  However, an integral Christian anthropology does not require the specific positions recommended here.

Body and Soul.[4]  The image of God and the biblical references to soul, spirit, heart, mind, will, body, and flesh imply a non-reductive holistic anthropology more than substance dualism or physicalism.  However, Scripture also teaches that absence from the body is presence with the Lord between death and bodily resurrection, a doctrine which entails the existence of persons without their bodies.  Thus dualistic holism best describes the cumulative biblical picture of the human constitution.[5]  Substance dualism can account for the intermediate state after death, but it must work to affirm the unity of the whole human being.  Substance monism, especially physicalism and materialism, has difficulty accounting for disembodied existence, and also it must overcome the reductivist tendency to explain the whole in terms of its most basic part.[6]  Emergentism affirms the ontological distinctness of persons from bodies and thus can allow for disembodied existence.  But it is basically physicalist because it claims that immaterial persons are generated by material bodies.  Of the major philosophies in the current dialogue, perhaps Thomism fits dualistic holism best.  It views the soul as a substantive form which structures and empowers matter to be one being or substance, a living human person with a variety of different capacities.  The soul subsists consciously after death but is an incomplete human being.

The Person or Self.  Philosophers rightly criticize views of the human self or person as an autonomous individual mind who is contingently related to his/her body, to other persons, and to the world.  Equally inadequate are views which identify the person with the body, with brain functions, or with self-perception.  A person is a self-conscious agent who is necessarily unique and self-identical in spite of changing in many ways over time, perhaps even changing or losing one’s sense of self-identity.  If there is an afterlife, the person remains unique and self-identical.  It is logically and metaphysically impossible that a person become another person or that there be two instances of a person.

The view of the self implied by the image of God is substantial, relational, changeable, and everlastingly self-identical.  Each human person is an embodied responsible agent who is related to God, to other humans, and to nature.  Each person continually changes and develops through these interactions.  But each one is also self-identical throughout this life and the life to come.[7]  An anthropology based on the image of God stands up well in current discussions of human selfhood.

Agency and the Will.  Scripture and common experience teach us both that human agents are determined, influenced, and limited in many ways and also that in most circumstances we are responsible beings with genuine choices among viable alternatives.  Complete determinism and radical libertarianism are theories of the will that seem exaggerated and one-sided.  Determinism also undercuts moral responsibility.[8]  Compatibilism aims to balance determinism and freedom by holding that our choices and acts are wholly determined by factors within and outside us, and yet they are free and responsible if we not compelled by internal factors or coerced by external factors against our will.  However, determinists and libertarians charge that compatibilism is incoherent, trying to have it both ways.

In Christian theology, libertarianism is typically criticized for overestimating human freedom in relation to God’s sovereignty and fallen humans’ ability to avoid sin.  Determinism (and thus compatibilism) is theologically problematic because it undercuts the genuine responsibility of image-bearing and implies that the fall into sin was unavoidable.  In the body-soul debate, physicalism in particular has the challenge of moving beyond compatibilism and account for genuine human choice.

An integral anthropology based on the image of God suggests conditional voluntarism.  As created by God, the will is enabled, delimited, conditioned, and influenced by many factors in many ways.  It is an irreducible part of the whole.  Thus deliberate acts can be uncaused causes.  This view implies that our first parents’ had genuine moral responsibility.  The choice to sin was significantly up to them and avoidable within the order of creation even though it was foreknown, permitted, and enabled by God.  Conditional voluntarism also recognizes that the residual image of God in humans retains the capacity for deliberation and choice even though humans cannot avoid sin or reconcile themselves to God.  It also allows for God to regenerate a person, healing effects of the fall and restoring desire for God, without eliminating or interfering with his/her capacity for genuine deliberation and choice.  Conditional voluntarism comports well with an integral anthropology and with key positions in theology and philosophy.

In sum, the body-soul problem, the nature of persons, and the freedom of the will are specific philosophical topics that can be addressed and benefited by a philosophical anthropology based on the image of God.

IV. CONCLUSION

Whether it is persuasive on all the details of the project, this essay has argued that the biblical doctrine of the image of God is as comprehensive as human life.  It has outlined what a philosophical anthropology based on the image could look like, how it could handle perennial philosophical questions about human nature, and how it could respond to scientific naturalism.  I hope that Christian philosophers will increase our efforts along these lines.

Here’s his argument. The Bible treats death as a great evil. For instance, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:25-26 that Christ “must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet” and that “the last enemy is death” (TNIV). At the same time, the Scriptures regard resurrection as a great good. Paul also told the Corinthians (in I Corinthians 15:16-19, TNIV) that,

if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, then we are to be pitied more than all men.

Physicalism can certainly account for the evil of death and the good of resurrection. After all, if physicalism is true, then human selves are nothing but living bodies. And if human persons are merely functioning biological organisms, then when these organisms cease functioning at death, the persons with whom they are identical cease to exist. So if physicalism is true, the resurrection of one’s body will be absolutely essential for one’s life after death. Given physicalism, death is an evil because it destroys a person and resurrection is a good because it brings that person back into existence.

How should we think about death and resurrection from the standpoint of dualism? If dualism is true, then selves are immaterial souls. If human persons are non-physical things that have physical bodies, then it is possible for human persons to continue existing even after their bodies die. If human persons can continue to exist in a disembodied state after their body dies and before their body is resurrected, then presumably they can enjoy eternal life without the resurrection. So, whereas the resurrection is required for eternal life if physicalism is true, resurrection is not essential for eternal life if dualism is true. Merricks concludes from these sorts of considerations that physicalism does a better job than dualism does accounting for the evil of death and the good of resurrection.

It is true that with dualism death is still bad and resurrection is still good. But the point of Merrick’s claim is that dualism doesn’t render death as bad as physicalism does and dualism doesn’t make resurrection as good as physicalism does. For the dualist, one’s death involves only a temporary separation of oneself from one’s body. The Christian physicalist argues that, though temporary existence in a disembodied state would be inconvenient for various reasons, such inconvenience would not be as bad as the utter tragedy of personal non-existence. Moreover, for the dualist, resurrection would seem merely to alleviate what would be at worst a set of disabilities brought on by the absence of one’s body. Before the resurrection of one’s body, one would still exist and be able to do anything that doesn’t require a body. In particular, one would presumably be conscious and would thus be able to experience the full range of valuable mental states, events, and processes for which consciousness by itself seems to suffice (such as loving, praying, hoping, dreaming, etc.). According to Merricks, though the restoration of one’s body with its concomitant abilities would be a good thing, it would not be as good a thing as the bringing of oneself back into existence from absolute oblivion.

I will argue that it is reasonable to doubt Merricks’ claim that physicalism can account for the evil of death and the good of resurrection better than dualism can. In general, my claims will be that, for all we know at present, (1) the dualist scenario of post-mortem disembodiment may be at least as bad as the physicalist consequence of temporary annihilation, and (2) resurrection may be at least as good a thing given dualism as it is relative to physicalism.

Christian dualists and Christian physicalists can agree on at least one important point relevant to this debate: Human persons, whether they are merely material substances or instead purely immaterial substances, are completely dependent on God for their ongoing existence. Body or soul, we exist and we continue to exist only because God graciously sustains us in existence. Body or soul, we would be rendered non-existent if God were to will to destroy us.

It follows that Christian dualism does not diminish the evil of death by ascribing to the immaterial soul a natural power not possessed by the material body. From a Christian dualist standpoint (as opposed to a Platonic dualist point of view), there is no essential difference between soul and body with respect to their destructibility. So the Christian physicalist cannot argue that death is worse given physicalism than it is given dualism on the grounds that the body can be destroyed and the soul cannot be destroyed. The only difference on which the physicalist has the right to insist is that death involves the actual destruction of a destructible body but that it would not necessarily involve the actual destruction of a destructible soul. So if dualism treats death more lightly than physicalism does, it must be only because bodies differ from souls in being actually destroyed by death and not in virtue of being destructible in a way that souls are not. But this difference may suffice to secure the physicalist’s argument. Does it?

To answer this question, we can revisit the Christian physicalist’s claim to provide a superior account of death and resurrection. Physicalists say death is very bad because it means personal annihilation and resurrection is very good because it means personal re-creation. But why would personal annihilation be a very bad thing? It seems implausible to think that annihilation would be very bad simply on the basis of the assumption that non-existence is very bad. After all, there are an infinite number of possible but non-actual persons God could have created but did not. Though it may well have been a good thing for at least some of these persons to exist, it isn’t clear that it is very bad that they do not. No, what makes annihilation a bad thing is instead that it involves the cessation of the conscious experiences of a person who had already enjoyed a period of actual existence. But notice that not just any cessation of the conscious experiences of a person is a bad thing. After all, each one of us regularly undergoes a loss of conscious experience whenever we are in a state of dreamless sleep. We don’t tend to think of all merely temporary periods of unconsciousness as bad. It is true that we think it bad for a person to be in a coma, but it is reasonable to think that this is primarily due to our uncertainty about whether the comatose person is likely to recover. Arguably, personal annihilation would be a very bad thing only if it involved a permanent loss of the potential for ongoing conscious experience.

So then, is death a greater evil given physicalism than it is given dualism? It is not clear that it is. If we set annihilationism aside (the view that God punishes ultimately unrepentant sinners by utterly destroying them), then the Christian view is that all actual persons will ultimately continue to exist for eternity – some in heaven and some in hell. If Christian physicalism is true, then everyone has ceased or will cease to exist at their death, but everyone will be brought back into existence at the General Resurrection before the Last Judgment. If everyone will be re-created at the General Resurrection, then this period of personal non-existence will be temporary. And if we are only temporarily non-existent, then there is arguably nothing seriously bad about our consequent temporary loss of conscious awareness and experience. From our perspective after our resurrection, it will likely seem at worst to have been like a state of dreamless sleep and at best like a brief lapse of consciousness. From our perspective now as we imagine our future temporary non-existence, it need seem no worse than a very prolonged state of dreamless sleep, which need not be a bad thing at all.

Now the Christian physicalist may reply that, though a period of temporary non-existence may not seem so bad to a person after he or she has been re-created, it nonetheless should seem, to an honest person anticipating his or her non-existence, to be a horrible thing – even when this person takes into consideration that he or she will eventually come back into existence. The Christian physicalist may well insist that honest people will regard even their temporary possible annihilation with horror and that they would be substantially comforted to believe that the dualist is right to think that we will continue to exist without interruption after our deaths as disembodied souls.

But would it be rational for a Christian to shudder at the thought of her possible temporary non-existence between her death and her resurrection? Arguably not. After all, whether we are bodies that will cease to exist temporarily or souls that will not, our future is in God’s hands. Whether physicalism or dualism is true, we are equally dependent on God for our future existence. If God chose to render us non-existent forever, he could do so, whether we are material substances or immaterial substances. But all those who trust in Christ can have a reasonable hope that God will not do this. The resurrection of Christ provides Christians with a solid ground for confidence that, come what may, we will ultimately enjoy sustained loving communion with God and the rest of the body of Christ forever. Just as Paul reminds the Corinthians of their resurrection hope, he also reminds the Roman church that absolutely nothing can separate us from the love of God. From the standpoint of these assurances of God’s ongoing gracious and loving faithfulness to us, any tendency we might have to contemplate our possible temporary non-existence between our death and resurrection with dismay ought to seem like an irrational lapse of faith. It makes sense for us to worry about being annihilated by death only if we don’t really trust that God will re-create us at the resurrection. Again, our non-existence would be a very bad thing only if it were permanent. But God’s demonstration of love for us in the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ ought to assure us that, if we should ever be annihilated, our non-existence would not be permanent.

What these reflections reveal is that, what would be truly horrible for a follower of Christ is not one’s temporary non-existence but instead one’s being permanently destroyed or abandoned by God. But this is a possibility that both the Christian physicalist and the Christian dualist face to an equal degree. Whether we are bodies or souls, it is at least logically possible at any given time for God to annihilate us. Since God can destroy a soul as easily as he can destroy a body, dualism entails no special advantage over physicalism when it comes to our ultimate and eternal well-being. Thankfully, whether we are physicalists or dualists, we can have equally reasonable confidence in God’s promise to be with us forever, no matter how many temporary lapses of consciousness we experience, whether due to sleep, concussion, senility, persistent vegetative state, or temporary non-existence between our death and resurrection.

The Christian physicalist could reply at this point that so far I have not really argued that the Christian versions of physicalism and dualism agree on the degree of evil constituted by death simpliciter, but instead only that both views entail that, if God eventually resurrects a person, then his or her death is no more evil for the physicalist than for the dualist. This becomes clear when we reflect on the fact that, if God didn’t bring about a given individual’s resurrection, then if physicalism is true, that person would suffer permanent annihilation, and if dualism is true, then that person would presumably at least exist after his or her death in a disembodied state. Consequently, the physicalist can still claim that resurrection is more important relative to physicalism than it is given dualism even if death is no worse for the physicalist than for the dualist if the resurrection eventually occurs. The idea is that what makes resurrection crucial if we are just material substances is that it is absolutely required for personal survival, whereas if we are immaterial souls, resurrection is not required for personal survival at all.

This seems like a strong argument. Does the dualist have an adequate reply? I think so. First of all, remember that, though a disembodied soul may well be capable of enjoying conscious experiences of various kinds and of initiating mental activities for which such conscious experiences suffice, a person without a body would be incapable of having the sorts of experiences and engaging in the sorts of activities for which a body is required. So a disembodied person, even if fully a person in the sense that the individual instantiates all the properties required for personhood, would nonetheless be a disabled and even crippled person. Such a person would not be able to exercise the full range of her God-given capacities. She would not, therefore, be a normally functioning person. Moreover, insofar as a disembodied person has desires to do things for which a body is needed, her desires will be frustrated. Since it is likely that persons who have been habituated to depend on their bodies for a relatively high proportion of their activities during their earthly life will be strongly inclined to want to engage in these activities, even when (perhaps especially when) they are disembodied, it is likely that disembodied persons would experience ongoing anxiety, frustration, and disappointment. The degree or extent of this frustration and discouragement will depend on the degree of their desire to engage in bodily activity. It seems plausible to think that the degree of this desire will be relatively high and that, consequently, the degree of their frustration will be as well. So though a disembodied person may survive between his death and his resurrection, it is highly unlikely that he will thrive during this period of time.

Perhaps it would be helpful to pause at this point to reflect on the plight of people suffering from various kinds of physical incapacitation in this life. There is, of course, a fairly wide range of degrees of physical disability involving a loss of motor control of various kinds. At one end of the spectrum are relatively minor, local, and temporary bodily dysfunctions such as mild and short-lived muscle cramps and instances in which a limb “falls asleep” for a brief time when one’s blood has been prevented from circulating fully through it. At the other end of the spectrum are cases of complete and permanent paralysis and quadriplegia. In the middle toward the minor inconvenience end are broken but set arms and legs which will eventually operate normally again, and in the middle toward the major disability pole are people with an amputated or paralyzed limb. If you have experienced any of these bodily impairments, you know what it is like to want to use a muscle or a limb to accomplish a desired goal and not to be able to do so. Even if you have not experienced a loss of motor control of a particular kind, you can probably imagine to some extent what it would be like to undergo such an unfortunate deficiency. Clearly, the degree of frustration you experience is a function of the seriousness of the incapacitation, the extent of bodily functions affected, the duration of time the disability lasts, and the prospects for finding some alternative means of fulfilling your desire or for compensating for not being able to satisfy it. With these examples in mind, it may be easier to imagine the degree of frustration one would feel if one were completely disembodied and consequently had no motor control at all – indeed no nervous system, muscles, skeletal structure, etc. to move or to enable oneself to move from one place to another.

Sensory impairments of various kinds and degrees provide another sort of illustration. In this case we can distinguish not only between temporary and permanent losses of sensory functioning, but also between different sensory modalities and different combinations of sensory modalities. As in the case of the loss of motor control, relatively brief losses of sensation are merely relatively inconvenient, whereas permanent losses of sensory functioning are permanently frustrating and disabling, at least with respect to those goals the attainment of which, and activities the enjoyment of which, require the absent means of sensation. And we should include here among the normal types of sensory experiences not only seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching, but also the experience of physical pleasures and pains of various kinds and one’s awareness of the state of one’s body at any given time as well as one’s consciousness of one’s orientation in space that is sometimes called the “kinesthetic” sense. Now imagine, if you can, what it would be like to be a disembodied soul, and thus to have no eyes, ears, tongue, nose, or nerve endings.

Now think about all the typical sorts of experiences we have and activities we engage in throughout a normal day. As we are normally constituted, all of these experiences require sense organs and all of these activities require a body (or at least enough of a body with the right sorts of parts). Therefore, a completely disembodied soul would not be capable of having any of these sort of experiences or engaging in any of these kinds of activities (unless this bodiless person were provided with means or instruments to enable the reception of sensory information and/or some degree of control of parts of a physical environment, should there be one – but in that case these added vehicles of perception or control would be functionally equivalent to bodies, and the soul would not be completely disembodied after all).

Finally, consider how many of these experiences and activities are typically involved in the ways in which we relate to other human beings. Actually, setting aside the highly unusual and probably non-existent abilities of extra-sensory perception (such as clairvoyance), extra-motor control of physical objects outside our bodies (such as telekinesis) and completely non-physical methods of communication with other human beings (such as mental telepathy), absolutely all of the interactions we engage in with other people require the use of our bodies in some way or other. All interpersonal human relationships are physical to some extent or other. Given this, a disembodied soul would be cut off from all normal means of relationship with other human persons.

In sum, as far as we know, disembodied souls would be incapable of external perception, non-mental action, and normal interpersonal human relations. Of course, such persons would seem to be capable of conscious experiences and activities that do not require a body. Most generally, it seems true that, as Descartes affirmed, a soul without a body could think and therefore could engage in all the more specific kinds of this generic mental process. If dualism is true, then even without a brain, a central nervous system, a muscular system, a skeletal system, and sense organs, in short, even without a body, a person could presumably hope, dream, fear, wish, etc. And most importantly, a disembodied person could presumably pray. That is, such a person could practice the communicative mental activity that is at the heart of our relationship with God. So even if a disembodied soul could have no relations of any kind with other human beings, he or she could presumably continue to relate to God, at least in a purely mental way.

I say that a bodiless person would presumably be able to think and pray, etc. because in order to engage in thinking of any kind at all one has to have something to think about, and in the absence of new sensory information coming in through sense organs, the only material one could have available for thought would have to come from memory. The objects of thought and consciousness are either proposition or non-propositional. If they are propositional, they are composed of concepts. If they are non-propositional, they are composed of images. Without a way to acquire new concepts and images through the senses, one would have to draw on concepts and images that one has in one’s mental storage. And one’s mental storage is just one’s memory. Would a disembodied person have access to his or her memories? As we will see shortly, it is not at all clear that he or she would.

I think we can conclude at this point that a disembodied person could at best have a limited kind of relationship with God (purely mental praying but no dancing, singing, leaping, kneeling, raising one’s arms, prostrating oneself, genuflecting, or partaking in the elements of communion) but no normal ongoing relationship with fellow human beings (except in memory if memory is possible in this state). What would the quality of such an existence be? We should remember that, though God made us for relationship with the Godhead (so that, as St. Augustine said in his Confessions, “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in (him)”), God also said, after creating Adam, that “It is not good for the man to be alone” (Genesis 2: 18a, TNIV). God created human beings for both communion with him and for community with each other. In light of this, in the absence of human relationship and given the presence of the ongoing frustration of various desires to engage in sensation and bodily movement of different kinds, it seems likely that the overall conscious experience of a disembodied person would be relatively negative (in spite of being in the presence of God – as Adam was in the Garden of Eden as well before God created Eve). Again, for all we know at present, though a disembodied person could survive between his or her death and the resurrection of his or her body, such a person could not thrive – far from it.

With this conclusion in mind, let us return to the current main bone of contention between the Christian physicalist and the Christian dualist. The physicalist says that physicalism agrees with Scripture in the degree of importance it attaches to resurrection whereas dualism does not. But I think we are now in a good position to see that this is not necessarily the case. I have already argued that, if God resurrects a person, then, for all we know at present, his or her antecedent death is evil to the same extent whether that person is merely a body or just a soul. But now suppose that God does not resurrect a dead person. If that were the case, a merely material person would remain non-existent forever. And that would be very bad. But now we can see that, for all we know at present, a purely immaterial person, as long as he or she continues to exist, would, in spite of presumably being able to think and pray, remain in a permanent state of relative frustration and unhappiness in virtue of being unable to sense, move, or relate to other human persons. Wouldn’t such a sub-optimal experiential state be at least as bad as non-existence? Wouldn’t it be worse? Wouldn’t it be better simply not to survive than to survive in a constantly highly frustrated state forever?

Now before we consider this question more carefully, we should reflect on a possible suggestion of the physicalist that dualism does not require that disembodied souls in the intermediate stage between death and resurrection be miserable. God could graciously remove the causes of their unhappiness until the resurrection. Since what would make them miserable is the frustration of their desires, then God could simply eliminate the causes of these desires. But what could be producing these desires other than their memories of former sensations, bodily motions, and human relations? Without these memories these bodiless selves would not have the desires that are based on them. So God could eliminate their misery simply by preventing them from having access to their memories. But if God did that, then since (as I argued above) memories are required for thinking in the absence of a means of acquiring new information, these persons would not be able to think (there would be nothing for them to think about). In that case, their plight would be experientially equivalent to that of the person who ceased to exist at death. Though they would exist, they would not be functioning either physically or mentally. Consequently, if they are resurrected, their situation until that point is no better than that of the non-existent person, and if their body is never resurrected and they remain in a completely non-functional and so unconscious state forever, then their situation is effectively just as bad as that of the non-existent person who is not resurrected.

The dualist can formulate this as a dilemma for the physicalist. If a disembodied person continues to have full access to all their memories, then she can think but she will be miserable. If a disembodied soul loses all access to her memories, then she will not be miserable but she will also not be able to think. So a disembodied soul will either be miserable or unconscious. Either way her situation is at least as bad as being non-existent.  So the physicalist’s appeal to the resurrection to demonstrate the superiority of physicalism is undercut.

Physicalists have at least two replies to this dilemma. First, they could charge that it presupposes a false dichotomy; God could provide disembodied people with selective access to their memories rather than either allowing them full access or taking away all of their access altogether. And God could make sure that they had enough memories to enable them to think and pray without allowing them to be able to remember those things that lead to their frustrated desires and misery. Second, physicalists could insist that it is better for someone who has existed once to ultimately exist forever than for him to be permanently annihilated, even if his ongoing existence is miserable. Both of these replies provide strong challenges to the dualist’s dilemma. How can the dualist respond?

In response to the first claim, that God could provide disembodied persons with selective access to their memories, the dualist can insist, as Aquinas did, that bodiless souls do not have memories because they cannot have them. The reason Aquinas gave for this (following Aristotle) is that memory storage requires a physical basis. Aristotle called this the “passive intellect.” Today we would think of it as part of the brain. In the same vein, Richard Swinburne has argued, in The Evolution of the Soul[3], that all the functions of the soul (and not just memory) are dependent on the functioning of a brain or other suitable physical mechanism.[4] According to this variation of dualism, though the soul can exist in the absence of a brain, it cannot perform any of its functions. Consequently, there is an important dualist theory that rules out the possibility of a disembodied soul having selective access to his or her memories, and to the extent that there are good reasons for thinking that this dualist theory is true, there are good reasons to reject the physicalist’s first claim.

In reply to the physicalist’s second claim, that it would be better to exist in a state of misery than not to exist at all, the dualist could either simply deny this on intuitive grounds or agree that it is true. But if a Christian dualist were to agree that the non-existence of a person previously existing person would be worse than any kind of ongoing personal existence, wouldn’t that be tantamount to conceding that the Christian physicalist has won the argument we have been examining? Not necessarily, since there is another version of substance dualism that we have not yet considered to which the dualist could resort for a defense against pure materialism. This is the dualist theory that human persons are a combination of material body and immaterial soul. On this hybrid view, a person cannot exist as only body or only soul. As we have been conceiving them, Christian physicalism entails that persons are just bodies and Christian dualism is the claim that persons are nothing but souls. The hybrid view is a dualist view because it makes both a material substance and an immaterial substance essential components of individual human persons. On this view, the soul is a thing that has the potential to think, will, and act, but only when it is conjoined with a requisite material substance such as a human body. In order to have a complete person, the soul’s potential to think, will, and act, must be actualized in conjunction with a body that provides the materials that can serve as objects of the soul’s thinking, willing, and acting. Though a lot more needs to be said about this view, what is important for present purposes is that there is a dualist view that has as one of its consequences that human persons are destroyed at death. So the Christian dualist who accepts this form of dualism can agree with the Christian physicalist that personal annihilation is worse than a miserable personal existence without having to concede that physicalism can account for the Bible’s position on death and resurrection better than any version of dualism can. Of course this version of dualism may end up being untenable. But in that case, the dualist can simply deny the claim that non-existence is worse than miserable existence on intuitive grounds as suggested earlier.

In conclusion, I suggest that the arguments I have offered provide adequate reasons at least to doubt and perhaps also to deny the Christian physicalist’s claim that physicalism accounts for the biblical emphasis on the evil of death and the good of resurrection more adequately than any version of dualism does. I believe I have offered sufficiently plausible grounds for concluding that it is not at all clear that the Christian physicalist has made a strong enough case for this claim.