Recovering Evangelicals

An Old Testament scholar tells us that the Bible makes it very clear: there has to be a resurrection of the body. Early church fathers were convinced that this body would contain the very same molecules that we “owned” while alive on earth. And many Christians today, without thinking too deeply about the subject, imagine their resurrected body looking very much like it does today.

But there are some simple reasons why it can’t be as physical as one might have imagined (hoped?): too many people have “owned” the same molecules while alive on earth, and each of us have “owned” many different bodily forms over the course of our earthly lives.

We then go on a historical journey over the past fifty thousand years looking at the evolution of Hebrew and then Christian thinking about the afterlife. The Hebrews held a very Babylonian and Egyptian view of the afterlife, with no postmortem judgement scenario: everyone ended up in a dark, dusty place crawling with maggots. Christians radically changed that in response to Zoroastrian and Greek thinking: there was now a postmortem judgement followed by a place of reward or of punishment.

In the process of this change: the Garden of Eden morphed into Paradise, which eventually became Heaven, while Sheol became Gehenna and then eventually Hell. Christians also introduced a couple new ideas to solve the problem of how one’s final destiny was decided: Penal Substitutionary Atonement and Purgatory.

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Can there be a materialistic explanation for the soul!? Does the soul have to be immaterial?

In the previous episode, we found that scholars  — scientists and philosophers — have long wrestled with the concept of an immaterial soul (and spirit) and come to a fully reasoned conclusion that it doesn’t work.

Here, we first look at what the soul “does” for us, and then at an idea that explains all those functions using neurobiology. So could “the soul” be a material emergent property of the material brain? The Bible never speaks clearly on what the soul is (note: it never says that soul and the immaterial spirit have to be one and the same thing).

But to get to the bottom line, we need to first define what “material” and “immaterial” are, and then go over some basic neurobiology. With that in place, we can talk about the human soul being an emergent property of the material brain: a very complex and intricately wired region of the brain which represents the “self” to oneself, to other humans, to the rest of Creation, and … if one is so inclined … to the Divine.

This material view of the human soul opens up whole new avenues for understanding postmortem resurrection (the topic of next week’s episode). It also opens up a way to bring together the Hebrew understanding of “the imago Dei” (being created in God’s image) with the very different Greek understanding of that concept.

Tell us what you think … leave questions or comments at bottom of this page (stir the pot a little bit!).

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The vast majority of people — whether they be Christians sitting in the pews of our churches, or non-believers outside the church — think that Substance Dualism is a central and core tenet of Christianity. That one can’t reject Substance Dualism and still call themselves Christian.

And yet many scholars — both Christian and non-believers — who have spent decades studying this question have reasons to conclude that Substance Dualism “doesn’t work.”

Here, we go through a number of scientific and philosophical arguments against Substance Dualism, and Biblical reasons why we don’t have to hang on to this idea.

(1) Spirit of the gaps: inserting this immaterial concept into the unknown has no explanatory power, and becomes increasingly irrelevant as science continues to provide material explanations for what the soul does.

(2) The mind-body problem: the vast majority of scholars going all the way back to Rene Descartes (and even Augustine) could not conceive how the immaterial soul can interact with the material body.

(3) Thermodynamics: the constant intervention of the immaterial into our material universe would massively upset the balance of energy in our universe.

(4) Depending on one’s view of when the immaterial soul is “attached” to the material body, there will be very uncomfortable ramifications when a fertilized egg splits into two different embryos (identical twins) or two different fertilized eggs join into one embryo (a “chimera”).

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Many Christians think they get their idea(s) about the human soul from the Bible. But the Bible doesn’t actually say too much about that. Which is rather paradoxical or ironic given that one would think that the Bible is all about the development of our soul. What exactly does the Bible have to say about this? Does it specifically say that we are made of two very different substances (a material body and immaterial soul … aka “Dualism”), or that the soul and body could both be material (“Monism”)?

In this episode, we trace our way through the Bible in a historical fashion and see how the Hebrews and Christians developed their thinking on this question as they encountered other civilizations and worldviews.

The Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) begins with a very Dualist view, but then wobbles back and forth between Monism and Dualism. These five books reflects several thousand years of ancient Hebrew thinking: beginning with the first eleven chapters of Genesis which closely resemble ancient Sumerian/Akkadian narratives, then continuing with a very Babylonian Abraham bringing his descendants into a very Egyptian worldview.

The Prophets (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, plus all the books named after prophets) reflect Hebrew thinking when Israel became her own nation, and were then quickly taken into captivity. These show them still wobbling between Monism and Dualism.

The Writings (Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes) and several of the Prophetic books reflect Hebrew thinking during that captivity. These show the latter leaning more strongly towards Dualism, and this idea just explodes onto the scene in the writing of Daniel. Is it a coincidence that this is also when Israel encounters Zoroastrianism and Greek philosophy, both of which were overtly Dualist in their understanding of the human soul?

After this, we have the books of the New Testament, which reflect Hebrew thinking filtered heavily through a Greek philosophical lens. It is in these books that Dualism is undeniable.

Clearly, JudeoChristian thinking did evolve, and did so as it encountered the worldviews of the pagan nations surrounding them.

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Leave a comment and tell us what you think …

Before we look at what the Bible has to say about the soul, we take a look at how the Biblical authors obtained their scientific understanding on things in general.

Luke first introduces his understanding of “phenomenological science” — the science of their day — and then goes through several examples of science reflected in the Bible, and the human origins of that thinking.

Some of these examples are still held to varying degrees by Christians today … simply because they’re found on the pages of the Bible.

Then, we look at how the Biblical authors saw the soul as residing in the chest … in the heart, kidneys, and liver … and how they seem to have come to this way of thinking because of the surrounding ancient Near Eastern culture.

Some listeners might resist the idea of scripture being so heavily influenced by human (even pagan!) thinking. But one would think that if God was micromanaging the writing of those texts, he would have corrected the authors on these and other ideas. Luke then takes us through several reasons why God might have chosen to use this process for giving us the Bible.

If you want to play this episode later on your device, look for Recovering Evangelicals in the iTunes Store, Podbean, Spotify, GooglePodcasts, or GooglePlayMusic.

If you want to help grow this pod-cast, please like and share with a friend. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find me on Twitter or Facebook.

Don’t forget to leave comments below … stir the pot a little bit!)

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