Body, Soul, and Human Life: The Nature of Humanity in the Bible
by Joel B. Green
I just finished reading Body, Soul, and Human Life: The Nature of Humanity in the Bible by Joel B. Green and am especially grateful to my long-time friend Mary Elizabeth Fisher of Sydney (formerly of Asbury Theological Seminary) who referred me. Without question, Green’s book is a key source when considering a robust biblical anthropology. Although one may not align with the thesis of Christian physicalism — that humans are made up of one integrated whole — readers will surely be informed by the depth of analysis and the even-handed treatment he offers in relation to the alternative view of Christian dualism — the notion that humans are made up of two ontologically distinct parts, material and immaterial, or body and soul.
Utilizing philosophical categories, scientific findings from neuroscience, theological savvy, and a keen exegesis of the relevant biblical data, Green argues that humans are not, after all, a composite made up of parts (body, soul, spirit / body, soul / material, immaterial), each with a distinct ontological status or each falling into a distinct parent category. Instead, he sets forth a case for a physicalist anthropology that is thoroughly Christian and a worthy contender to the most widely held view known as dualism (namely, that humans are comprised of two distinct parts, a body and a soul).
After reading John W. Cooper’s Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate and more recently J. P. Moreland’s The Soul: How We Know It’s Real and Why It Matters (see my comments), Green offers significant challenges to my views causing me to rethink some commitments that I hold toward holistic dualism. Encompassing the physical and non-physical aspects of humanity without committing to the traditional concept of a “soul”, Green puts forth a nuanced version of “monism” or Christian physicalism. To be very clear, Green does not advance a reductionistic view of humanity that so often is portrayed by materialists who charge that all aspects of human experience and existence are merely and only a composite of synaptic firings, neuron engagements, or brain states. I’m finding his view to be quite robust and it deserves serious consideration.
His thesis is essentially this: Rather than an immaterial soul residing inside a material body, humans are an integrated being made up of one substance (hence “monism”). A human does not have a soul; a human is a soul. The one cannot and should not be extracted from the other. As I understand, it would appear Green aligns most closely with Aristotelian metaphysics rather than with the strict dualism of Plato. In step with an integrative construct (widely employed by Aristotle), Green demonstrates that although “the biblical materials and the natural sciences [do not] paint entirely with the same brush in their portraits of the human person,” (p 71) the respective disciplines of science and Scripture do converge to tell the same stories about the nature of humanity.
Needless to say the impact and import of this approach is far-reaching affecting the Christian’s view of salvation, mission, and the future restoration of all things. All biological life shares in the same quality of being, which is dependency upon the Creator. This dependency is the grounding upon which “relationality” emerges for humanity. In fact, the “significance of human life is tied to dependence upon God” (p 67). And yet, as the Christian story goes, there is a sickness that has infected our ability to hold in right relation our dependence upon God and embrace our full humanity. On the implications of a standard dualism and regarding the sickness known as sin Green states:
“Sin” is a multivalent term that points to the myriad ways in which humans — individually, collectively, and systematically — neglect, deny, and refuse simply to be human — that is, to embrace and live out their vocation as creatures made in the image of God. Accordingly, a Christian conception of human transformation does not allow the categorization of either the person or his or her salvation into “parts,” as though inner and outer life could be separated. Angst in recent decades over how to prioritize ministries of “evangelism” and “social witness” is simply wrongheaded, therefore, since the gospel, the “evangel” of “evangelism,” cannot but concern itself with human need in all its aspects. Only an erroneous body-soul dualism could allow — indeed, require — “ministry” to become segregated by its relative concern for “spiritual” versus “material” matters. Nor does a Christian conception of human transformation allow us to think of the restoration of individuals, as it were, one at a time, but pushes our categories always to account for the human community and, beyond humanity, the cosmos. Persons are not saved in isolation from the world around them.
(pp 69-70, emphasis his)
One section in the book that especially intrigued me involved the mechanics and nature of change or personal transformation; namely, “persons and not parts of persons” are transformed (p 115). [ALERT: This post is a wee bit thick, so do bear with me.] Thus, in keeping with his physicalism, Green would likely put forth that when persons experience change, the brain changes and vice versa. This is not to reduce persons to mere brain states, neurons, or what have you, but it is to say that brains are involved and indeed impacted by behavior and vice versa. Persons are to be considered units or one integrated whole, not merely a composite of blended though distinct parts. Thus, change or transformation affects and effects the whole person.
Illustrating that “neural transformation in response to environmental factors” intersect, he appeals to the now famous and fascinating study of the London taxi-drivers to show that “day-to-day activities induce changes in the morphology of the brain” (p 116). This factor alone has been teased out in relation to spiritual transformation by N. T. Wright (see my review of “After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters” for an explication of the London experiment).
Not only does the brain participate in our transformation but so also does our social conditioning have a significant impact. Green states that our genetic makeup biases our dispositions and character so that “the neuronal systems and pathways responsible for much of what we think, feel, believe, and do are shaped by learning,” in which he takes “learning” to be social in nature. He writes:
If [or rather “Since] the neurobiological systems that shape how we think, feel, believe, and behave are forever being sculpted in the context of our social experiences, then in a profound sense we must speak of personal (trans)formation in relational terms. Our autobiographical selves are formed within a nest of relationships, a community. (p 116)
Because of this ebb and flow of incoming information via social interaction and experiences and the continual evolving of the brain in response to these stimuli, we seem unable to “unambiguously interpret” the world-an-sich (world as it is). Our interpretive capacity continually changes and, for this reason, is somewhat handicapped, as it were, causing a “deficit” of all the necessary information we need to see the world as it is. Consequently, our “cortical networks fill in. They make their best guess, given incomplete information.” And so, we “find a human face in the full moon, recognize Beethoven playing his piano in a cloud formation…or prejudicially categorize people by any number of criteria” (p 117, emphasis his). This process is known as imagination formation whereby a conceptual schema is constructed by which we interpret our world and our experiences.
As a result, the mechanics of worldview formation are born. Green states:
Our hermeneutical equipment, then, is formed at the synaptic level, is capable of reformation, and is even now providing the conceptual schemes or imaginative structures by which we make sense of the world around us. My “perception” of the world is based in a network of ever-forming assumptions about my environment, and in a series of well-tested assumptions, shared by others with whom I associate, about “the way the world works.” Ambiguous data may present different hypotheses, but my mind disambiguates that data according to what I have learned to expect. That is, embodied human life performs like a cultural, neuro-hermeneutic system, locating (and, thus, making sense of) current realities in relation to our grasp of the past and expectations of the future. (p 118)
This is large on so many levels. But without spending more time on unpacking implications (the book adequately puts forth some), there is one other important agency that is utilized in personal transformation and in our identity construction. This agency Green labels “narrative formation.” Where “lesions to the neural network responsible for the generation of narrative” are found on a human brain, persons appear to “suffer a loss in their grasp of their own identities.” In fact, “so pivotal is narrative to the formation of identity, including the formation and articulation of beliefs, that in the absence of memory humans will create stories by which to make sense of their present situation” (p 120). Coordinately, “brain lesion studies have demonstrated that damage to the emotion-processing center of the brain impedes real-life rationality and decision-making” (p 121).
If my take approximates Green’s findings, then we can say that conversion is not strictly an intellectual enterprise nor an emotional one. It does not just happen inside me. Instead, conversion is a physiological, relational, emotional, intellectual, moral, and environmental event as well as an ongoing process that affects and effects who I am as a whole person. Moreover, my worldview, that interpretive lens whereby I try and make sense of myself and the world, is continually being shaped and reshaped by the social nexus in which I find myself, by those pathways carved into my neuro-biological correlates, the result of which is a narrative that I and others write to define who I am and how I live.