The Person in The New Testament
There is somewhat less agreement on New Testament conceptions
of human nature. Most scholars now agree that the New Testament
generally supports a holistic and nonreductive physicalist account
of the person. However, some argue that the New Testament presupposes
dualism, since there are a few passages appearing to support a
doctrine of "the intermediate state." This intermediate
state, it is said, assures Christians that between death and the
general resurrection they survive to await judgment. Therefore,
the person must be "constructed in such a way that at death
it can `come apart,' with the conscious personal part continuing
to exist while the organism disintegrates." Some of
the biblical texts cited to support this are Matthew 10:28; Matthew
27:50; Luke 16:19-31; Luke 23:42-43; John 12:25; 1 Peter. 3:19-20;
and Revelations 6:9-11. Several questions have to be settled in
regard to these texts and their relevance for the "intermediate
state." Again, one question concerns translation. For example,
when it is said of Jesus in Mt. 27:50 that he "gave up his
spirit," is this to be taken literally, or as a metaphorical
way of saying that he died?
Second, Christians have had to distinguish between the teaching
of Scripture and the assumptions, concepts, and theories of the
time they were used to convey the teachings. In other words, it
is common to speak of God's revelation being accommodated to the
thought-forms of the ancient cultures. An important example is
the use of -- or accommodation to -- ancient cosmology throughout
the Old Testament, as when Isaiah says that God will gather Israel
and Judah from "the four corners of the earth" (Isaiah
11:12). So if it is shown that the New Testament speaks
of an intermediate state -- or otherwise presumes some sort of
dualism -- an important question to raise is whether this is biblical
teaching or merely accommodation to the thought of the
times. That is, we have to ask whether metaphorical language was
used to convey theological truths that could not have been conveyed
very well in other thought-forms at the time.
It may be most accurate to say that the New Testament has no
explicit teaching on this issue. Rather, various New Testament
writers assumed one or another conception of the constitution
of the human being in order to teach about other issues concerning
the relation of humans to one another, to the rest of creation,
and to God.
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| Contributed by: Dr. Nancey Murphy
|
