Christian Physicalism? Philosophical Theological Criticisms is an important contribution to the d... more Christian Physicalism? Philosophical Theological Criticisms is an important contribution to the debate between physicalism and dualism regarding human persons, especially as it relates to Christian philosophical and theological commitments. The book is impressive in its scope, raising challenges for physicalism in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, personal identity, epistemology, neuroscience, physics, theology, and historical Christian thought, and in Christian doctrines such as the Incarnation, Holy Saturday, sanctification, the intermediate state, and the general resurrection. Physicalists-Christian or not-would do well to consider it. In this review, I summarize the central claims of each chapter and offer my commentary on a few of these claims. Due to limited space, I cannot provide commentary for each chapter. R. Keith Loftin and Joshua R. Farris highlight the importance of the debate between dualism and physicalism for Christian philosophy and theology in their introduction to Christian Physicalism? They note the rise in Christian physicalism among philosophers, theologians, and biblical scholars in the past twenty-five years and cite as motivations for this rise the success of the sciences and the belief "that the Scriptures yield a portrait of humans as unified, functionally integrated agents" (xvii). Yet they maintain that the sciences do not support physicalism, that dualism fares better than physicalism in accounting for biblical and philosophical data, and that dualism is more consistent with Nicene Christianity than physicalism. Christian Physicalism? supports each of these claims. In "The Incorporeality of the Soul in Patristic Thought," Paul L. Gavrilyuk rejects the claim by some contemporary scholars that early Christian thinkers adopted "Greek dualism" over biblical anthropology. Gavrilyuk first distinguishes between "ontological" and "anthropological" dualism in Greek thought, the former of which postulates "two independent sources of good and evil" and the latter of which considers "human beings to be soul-body composites" (2). He then makes several claims based on this distinction. First, most early Christian thinkers rejected ontological dualism. As for anthropological dualism, there was no single Greek view of human nature. Further, while most early Christian thinkers accepted the incorporeality of the soul for philosophical and theological reasons, they disagreed over the soul's nature and did not simply integrate Platonic dualism with Christian anthropology.
Christian Physicalism? Philosophical Theological Criticisms is an important contribution to the d... more Christian Physicalism? Philosophical Theological Criticisms is an important contribution to the debate between physicalism and dualism regarding human persons, especially as it relates to Christian philosophical and theological commitments. The book is impressive in its scope, raising challenges for physicalism in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, personal identity, epistemology, neuroscience, physics, theology, and historical Christian thought, and in Christian doctrines such as the Incarnation, Holy Saturday, sanctification, the intermediate state, and the general resurrection. Physicalists-Christian or not-would do well to consider it. In this review, I summarize the central claims of each chapter and offer my commentary on a few of these claims. Due to limited space, I cannot provide commentary for each chapter. R. Keith Loftin and Joshua R. Farris highlight the importance of the debate between dualism and physicalism for Christian philosophy and theology in their introduction to Christian Physicalism? They note the rise in Christian physicalism among philosophers, theologians, and biblical scholars in the past twenty-five years and cite as motivations for this rise the success of the sciences and the belief "that the Scriptures yield a portrait of humans as unified, functionally integrated agents" (xvii). Yet they maintain that the sciences do not support physicalism, that dualism fares better than physicalism in accounting for biblical and philosophical data, and that dualism is more consistent with Nicene Christianity than physicalism. Christian Physicalism? supports each of these claims. In "The Incorporeality of the Soul in Patristic Thought," Paul L. Gavrilyuk rejects the claim by some contemporary scholars that early Christian thinkers adopted "Greek dualism" over biblical anthropology. Gavrilyuk first distinguishes between "ontological" and "anthropological" dualism in Greek thought, the former of which postulates "two independent sources of good and evil" and the latter of which considers "human beings to be soul-body composites" (2). He then makes several claims based on this distinction. First, most early Christian thinkers rejected ontological dualism. As for anthropological dualism, there was no single Greek view of human nature. Further, while most early Christian thinkers accepted the incorporeality of the soul for philosophical and theological reasons, they disagreed over the soul's nature and did not simply integrate Platonic dualism with Christian anthropology.
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