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In “Resurrection of the Very
Embodied Soul?” Ted Peters argues that the Christian understanding of eternal
salvation is not threatened by the rejection of substance dualism. In fact, the
rejection of dualism by both the cognitive neurosciences and the Christian
tradition represents an important area of consonance between theology and
science - namely, that human reality is embodied selfhood. Peters notes that this
issue deserves attention because some theorists, in both cognitive science and
philosophy, claim two things: first, the findings of the neurosciences
regarding the brain’s influence on the mind demonstrate that the human soul
cannot be thought to exist apart from a physical body and, second, that this
physicalist interpretation so undermines the doctrine of the immortal soul that
the Christian view of eternal salvation becomes counter- scientific.
Peters points out that until
recently theologians have not been forced to clarify the distinction between
two overlapping ways of conceiving personal salvation: One, rooted primarily in
the ancient Hebrew understanding, pictures the human person as entirely
physical, as dying completely, and then undergoing a divinely effected
resurrection. The other, a later view influenced by Greek metaphysics, pictures
the human person as a composite of body and soul; when the body dies the soul
survives independently until reunited with a body at the final resurrection. In
both pictures, however, the resurrection of the body is decisive for salvation.
Now, however, to the extent that the dualistic vocabulary and conceptuality
inherited by Christian theology from the Platonic tradition begins to look too
much like Cartesian substance dualism, theology is in error.
In approaching the
constructive question of how best to relate cognitive theory and theology,
Peters first examines and rejects two “blind alleys”: the notion of the
“humanizing brain” developed by James Ashbrook and Carol Albright, and the
artificial intelligence model of the human soul as disembodied information
processing developed by Frank Tipler. In contrast to Tipler’s view, Peters
notes that belief in the resurrection, for Christian theology, does not depend
on any natural process identifiable by science or philosophy, but on the
witnessed resurrection of Jesus Christ at the first Easter. The Christian
promise points toward an eschatological transformation - a new creation - to be
wrought by God. Peters follows Wolfhart Pannenberg in connecting the
resurrection to God’s eschatological act wherein time is taken up into
eternity, and wherein God provides for continuing personal identity even when
our bodies disintegrate.
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