Matt Slick Live

The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network. It's Matt Slick live. Matt is the founder and president of the Christian Apologetics Research Ministry found online at karm.org. When you have questions about Bible doctrines, turn to Matt Slick live. Francis taking your calls and responding to your questions at 877-207-2276.

Here's Matt Slick. Welcome to the show. Hope you're going to have a good time today listening. We've got an esoteric topic we're going to be discussing. I'll talk about that in a little bit. I just want to remind you that if you want to call, we're going to have a question series set on the nature and extent of the soul. That's what we're going to be talking about today. We've got a guy waiting, Stan Wallace. We're going to get to him. But I want to remind you that this month is matching funds drive.

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In the subject line, put in radio comment or radio question, and we can get to them. We usually get to them on Friday. Now tomorrow is Friday the 13th, and I'm going to talk about what is going on with Friday the 13th.

I do it each year or each Friday the 13th. I mentioned what the possible issue is with it and where it originated out of Scripture. A lot of people are surprised about that. It's a possibility.

We don't know, but we'll see. I like talking about it. Like we've been talking about baptism and some other topics. Today, we're going to be talking about the nature and extent of the soul, and we're going to be talking with Stan Wallace. I believe, Stan, you're on right now, aren't you?

Are you there? Oh, I hit the button. Hello. Sorry about that. Hey, Stan, welcome to the show. Thanks.

Good to be here. All right. Now, ladies and gentlemen, Stan Wallace, Dr. Stan Wallace, has written a book, and it's worth looking into. It's about neuroscience, the soul, and humanity, and things like that. Now, some of you may know that I like topics like that and getting into issues, and he and I had a discussion over the phone last week. I'll tell you, he knows his stuff, and it's going to be interesting, so there's a little bit of an intro. But, Stan, could you introduce yourself, take as long as you need, and how people might get a hold of you? And then we're going to jump into this topic of the nature of our soul and stuff like that. Okay? Go ahead.

Sure. I serve as president and CEO of Global Scholars. We equip Christian professors to be Christ on campus and in public universities around the world, and I've also done graduate work in philosophy, hold my master's and doctorate in the field, and am very interested in some ideas that are seeping into our churches that I think are pretty contrary to Scripture and need to be addressed from a Biblical and philosophical perspective concerning what we are, the nature of our soul and its relationship to our bodies, and how we flourish. So, I was convicted by the Lord to practice what I preach. I'm always talking to our professors about bringing Biblical truth into issues that they see need clarification, and this is an issue that the Lord brought to my attention that I might be able to help clarify, and it led to writing this book. Good.

Good, good. I don't know if you've heard me very much and stuff, but I do a little bit of philosophy and logic and discussion to the nature of the soul, and yesterday did a talk on soul sleep and problems with it, and how it affects the hypostatic union and various things. So, for me, it's a fun topic. But you mentioned already, and we can take it the order of whichever way you want to go, but the things creeping into the church that are problematic. Now, I know I'll have to get to that, but foundations are first. So, whichever direction you want to go, you want to talk about the nature of the soul, or problems that are going on in the church, what would you like to jump in at? Well, let's just start with scripture. What do we know from the Biblical text about what we are? And then we can go from there, okay? Sounds good.

All right. So, historically, and this is across the ages and across the globe, there's pretty much been a consensus that we are ultimately a soul that has a body. But we're not identical to our body, and we're not a composite of soul and body. We read often of, for instance, Paul saying he desires to be absent from the body and present with the Lord, which indicates he is that thing that continues even after his body dies.

Now, Jesus says the same to the thief on the cross. I think we lost him. Yeah, something just happened, and we just lost him. I just watched it on the screen. So, hopefully, he'll just call back, and we'll get him back on the air. So, as soon as he finds out what happened, not a big deal. But let me kind of just preamble it a little bit.

He said something that's good. We have a soul, we have a body, but we're not a composite of the soul and the body. Now, there's a view in philosophy called materialism. Materialism says that the physical world is all there is, and if the physical world is all there is and there's no supernatural, then it means then that the human brain produces the spirit, produces the mind. But that would be problematic because it means the mind is restricted to neurochemical reactions.

And so when someone says that the soul and the body are identical and or concomitantly related to each other, that one generates the other, then you'd have a problem. All right. Hey, Stan, you're back on. I don't know what happened there. I'm back. Where did I lose you? You just talked about we have a soul and we have a body, but it's not a composite of soul and body. And then a few seconds after that, the phone went dead.

Okay. I mentioned Jesus's comment to the thief on the cross, that today you will be with me in paradise, even though his body won't be. He, his soul, will be. And Paul writing things such as, it's better to be absent from the body and present with the Lord, the sense that I, Paul, will be with the Lord, but I won't have my body. So there's a clear teaching throughout scripture that, yes, we are essentially a soul, but secondly, we are deeply united to our bodies.

In fact, it's such a deep unity that some of the Old Testament texts almost seems like it's talking about just one thing, that we are a composite. Again, through progressive revelation, we realize that, no, as we hear more and more from the biblical authors, that we are a soul that has a body, but it's a deep functional unity. And so with that as a basis, the Church has always had this sense of, we are called to care for the soul and the body. And we've done better and worse at that in different times, in different places, but there's this both and, without confusing the soul and body and saying they're the same thing, or in some way we're only a body. And that's the worry, is that because there's so many good, there's so much good research coming out of neuroscience, which is great, we're learning a lot about the brain, but a lot of Christians, at least in evangelical circles, are confused a little bit about, well, what does that mean for the soul? You know, historically we've said there is a soul, but gosh, it sounds like we're saying now that there may not be a soul, because every time we have a memory, we can trace it to a brain event and some neural activity. So maybe our idea about the soul has to change. Maybe there is no soul, we're really just a bundle of neurons that are generating these experiences of thoughts and beliefs and desires and choices and so on. And so that's where the confusion comes in, trying to get clear on, well, how do we make sense of the biblical text, talking about us as a soul that has a body, with the data of neuroscience, which seems to, at least before we really think about it, be saying we're just a body and the soul's kind of passé. We should kind of give that idea up. Now, hearing you say that, I've got, my mind is filling with potential problems with that, with basically materialism and reducting to the issue of we're nothing more than neurochemical reactions, which means we can't trust our own thoughts.

They're just necessitated. So do you want to talk about that at all, or do you want to get into what does it mean to be human? Sure, I'll go any direction you think your listeners would like to have the conversation go. The problem is there's so many good things here, we'll run out of time, so I want to do whatever's best for your audience. Well, my audience is varied, and I've been trying to train them for years using logic and scripture.

Scripture, of course, is predominant, and using logic and teaching various things. And yesterday, just coincidentally, I went through the issue of soul sleep, and I explained the problems with soul sleep, particularly as it relates to the hypothetic union, and how it invalidates what's called the communication of the properties. And so I explained these things, and I showed why that's a problem. And sometimes when I talk to atheists about materialism, I know you know this property dualism, that the soul emanates, or this mind, whatever they call it, is a property of the physical brain. Well, if that's the case, then that means we're nothing more than neurochemical reactions. And if that's the case, then it's just necessary chemical reactions. Well, how do necessary chemical reactions produce truth? How do we know that what we're even saying about necessary chemical reactions is true?

It's just chemical reactions. And so it reduces to self-refutation, because you can't trust it. So I talk to them like that.

So that should give you an idea of what level to go at. So why don't we try this? Let's talk about an ontological issue on the nature of humanity. I don't know if you want to get into that. What does it mean to be human?

Sure. I think the best definition is an individuated human nature. That's what a soul is. And in that is the question you're raising, what is that thing referred to as human? So let me take those three terms in reverse order to unpack it. So individuated human nature.

So what's a nature? Well, let me take as an example playing piano. If you ask me, can you play a Bach concerto right now? I'm going to say no, I can't. I don't have the capacity to play piano right now. But if you were to ask me, can you ever see yourself doing that?

I'd say yes. I have the capacity to have the capacity. In other words, I have the ability to learn to play piano.

I can't do it right now. It's not a first order capacity or ability I have at the moment. But I have a second order capacity or ability to develop the first order capacity. Now, that second order capacity, the ability to learn to play piano, requires a third order capacity, a higher order capacity, namely the capacity to understand musical theory, to read music. Which assumes a fourth order capacity, a higher order capacity, which is the ability to reason abstractly. So we have a hierarchy of capacities here. And the highest level capacity is what a nature is. And actually it's the set of all of the highest order capacities. So that's what a nature is. And so different things, different types of things, have different natures.

They have different sets of highest order capacities. So a human nature is that set of highest order capacities that all and only human beings have. And those are individuated because your soul, the way you express all those highest order capacities, the same ones that I have, but they're expressed in different ways. We're individuals. We're individuated. So that's what a soul is. And in that is the concept of human nature, humanness.

And it's actually the same thing we hear with Christ. We've got a break coming up, so let's continue with this because I like what you just said, what we share with Christ. That's going to be good stuff. I'll probably get into communicable attributes.

I like that. Hey, folks, we'll be right back after these messages. And if you want a call about this topic, we'll be the number out later. It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877-207-2276.

Here's Matt Slick. All right, everybody, welcome back to the show. We have Stan Wallace on, and I just want to let you know that if you want to discuss or have a question related to the topic, which is the nature of the soul, this is, I can tell you, this is a very important topic.

It's not just something that philosophers and guys with big, thick glasses have to talk about. This gets down to the issue of preaching and teaching and ultimately even relates to the gospel itself. So, hey, Stan, are you still there? I'm here. All right, so we were talking before the break about our relationship with Christ in this issue of humanity, so take it on.

Keep going. Well, yeah, that's such an important topic to tie this into. We're told that Christ took on our form, our nature, shares our nature with us, and is the same nature Adam had and all humans had, and that's why he's an equal substitute for us. And, in fact, by understanding the nature of the soul and these different capacities of the soul and how Christ exemplified each of them fully, we can get a much more robust picture of what maturity in Christ looks like because we understand what it looks like to fully flourish in terms of all the capacities of soul and body, full humanness, that he ultimately modeled for us. And it just makes the scriptures come alive so that we can start to put some of this together and unpack things he's saying and doing as the exemplar of somebody who's fully and completely human as well as fully and completely divine. This also relates to evangelism and discipleship and missions.

In fact, the Luzon movement, the global missions movement, just did a global survey, about a four-year survey, asking church leaders, mission leaders, what are the key gospel issues in the next 25 years that we, the church, need to be able to address? And in the top of the list was, what does it mean to be human? Because it has such implications on issues in biomedical ethics, abortion and euthanasia and all of the technology being developed. It has implications in terms of gender identity issues, in terms of transhumanism, in terms of AI. And it's issues that churches and the broader population are really wrestling with. So this issue has so many touch points, and they're questions we've got to be able to answer to engage the world in the gospel and in discipleship within our churches.

Yeah, I agree completely. Well, what got you started with this? Was there a statement someplace or a series of statements that it gradually just kind of grew on you?

What happened? Yes, there were. So I was sitting in a church service, a very, very solid Bible-believing church, and the passage was Romans 12, 1 and 2. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is. And I was excited that was the text for that day, because so often we tend to downplay in our churches the role of thinking well, the life of the mind. And so, as I expectantly awaited the pastor to get into the text, after reading the text, he spent the next 30 minutes talking about neuroscience.

In other words, how do we renew our mind? Well, we understand our brain better. And that worried me a little bit, because I thought, well, yeah, the brain is involved in our thinking. We certainly use our brain. We are embodied. There's a reason we're in a body.

We need this body to function in the world. But ultimately it's not where our thinking happens, and our character is formed, and our choices occur. And so I approached him afterwards, and I just said I'm a little confused. It helped me kind of put this together, how what you were saying relates to transforming our minds. And he had quoted throughout the sermon a gentleman who I had not known of before. His name is Kurt Thompson, and a book called Anatomy of the Soul, which really focuses on neuroscience and how it's helpful in spiritual formation, which just raised red flags for me, because the disconnect between neural formation and spiritual formation. And so as I questioned him, he gave me another book. He said, hey, this will really help you understand it. It was a book called Renovated, God, Dallas Willard, and the Church that Transforms by Jim Wilder.

And when I read this, I got even more concerned. One, I studied under J.P. Moreland, who was Dallas Willard's protégé, and I know Dallas enough to know that's not what he was saying, what was in this book, and furthermore, it seemed to continue to speak as if, well, not speak as if, very directly make statements like your brain forms your character, or you are your brain, in so many words. And so I started to look into this and realize this is a whole movement within the evangelical world. It's called neurotheology, and it is this assumption that either we are purely physical beings, that the mind is the brain. In fact, Kurt Thompson in his book says the words mind and brain are really interchangeable. And if it's not a full physicalist reductionist, we're just a brain.

It's a, and you mentioned it before, a property dualism or a non-reductive physicalism, which says, yeah, there are mental events and things like beliefs and choices, but they're really byproducts of the brain. They're kind of like smoke is to fire. They don't have, they don't really exist in and of themselves.

They just kind of emerge or are secreted by the brain, which raises a lot of questions about the intermediate state when we die and our brain doesn't function. How could we function? So all of these questions started to really bother me. And as I read more and studied more, I realized these guys and not just them, others are everywhere. And whether it's a pulpit in a church or a small group, going through one of their books or a podcast that they're on, these ideas are being espoused unchecked.

And though they have very, very good pastoral advice, I really appreciate these brothers for the very helpful advice they provide in terms of our own maturity in Christ, it's when they ground it in the brain that I start to worry because it's the long-term implications of that physicalist understanding of the human person that has all of the implications that I actually spend two chapters in the book unpacking, both in terms of our own spiritual formation and our ministry to a hurting world. Okay. Now, you and I could talk for a couple hours over a cup of coffee about all of this. So I like to connect dots.

And so I'll do a little bit of shorthand with you. Physicalism would lead us whole sleep, which would invalidate the hypostatic union. So this issue, as I say to people, heresy begets heresy, and it's never alone.

One error is never by itself. There's always things connected to it. I'm talking to my audience here. If physicalism is true, then what that means is the soul is a product of the physical brain. When the physical brain ceases, the questions that come on then to the soul continue. These are just questions that are related to this.

And so if that's the case, then the soul ceases, then Jesus Christ, his human nature ceased, which means he's no longer Jesus. And there's humongous ramifications to this. So this is how serious I was telling them. I know you know this.

So this kind of reminded me of B.F. Skinner and Skinnerianism with behavior modification based on patterning, based on humanistic philosophy and evolutionary theory. Oh, we've got a break coming up, so hold on. Hold on.

All right. We'll be right back, folks, after these messages. Please stay tuned. It's Matt Slick live. Taking your calls at 877-207-2276.

Here's Matt Slick. All right, everybody. Welcome back to the show at the bottom of the hour. If you have questions or comments that you'd like to ask about this, we'll get way to the last segment of the show in about 15 minutes. But the number is 877-207-2276. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I don't know if you understand how important this topic is, but it is absolutely critical. The more he and I are talking, the more clear it's becoming to me that this is a heresy that's creeping into the Christian church and its humanistic and its philosophy is man-based and it reduces man to neurochemical reactions, and this will affect issues of ethics and whether or not God exists or not and how we can understand truth.

It really is a very, very serious, very, very serious issue. So, Stan, you still there? You there, buddy? Let me see if I hit him. Here. Okay, there we go. I keep forgetting to hit the right button.

I'm not used to that one. We do interviews. I forgot where we were before the break, but you got me going, and I started writing some questions down on neurotheology, which I'm embarrassed to say I wasn't aware of it until you and I talked.

But this is really, really something. So wouldn't this mean if neurotheology is correct? Let me ask you. Isn't it just reductio to materialism? Isn't that what it is? Well, again, I think there's two ways that we could read the neurotheologians. On a plain reading of what they're writing, yeah, it's reducing the person to just a physical being, to a brain and central nervous system. There is some ambiguity. Some of their passages do seem to allow for a soul to exist as an epiphenomenon, as something that emerges out of the brain and is dependent on the brain, but ultimately either of those are physicalistic views. The brain is ultimately what is real, and if there is a soul or an immaterial dimension, it's wholly dependent on the brain for its existence and its sustenance. So either way, we're dealing with physicalism here.

And this is not new. This has been around in the evangelical church for, gosh, 30-plus years. There are a couple of professors at Fuller who take this view. They call themselves Christian physicalists. Nancy Murphy, she's a philosopher there, says, quote, well, better not say quote, I won't get it quite right, but essentially there is no need to posit the soul or other immaterial realm of the human person. From neuroscience, we know that we are fully physical beings and we need to learn to do our theology accordingly. And then Joel Green, who's a New Testament professor there, says the same thing and is advancing what he calls a neuroscientific hermeneutic, which is how to interpret the scriptures in light of us being purely physical. Now, I think that's just wrong all the way around, but the point is that they've been there for a while, so they've influenced a generation of pastors and Christian counselors and others to either be at least open to this idea, or I think in a lot of cases just buy into it hook, line, and sinker. And I am surprised, and I think this is a testament to the level of our seminaries' training in these issues, but I am surprised how many very, I would say, thoughtful and well-trained pastors are embracing some of these neurotheologians because, again, they're writing such good material pastorally. They're just tying it into a physicalist anthropology, but so many pastors and others are just interested in the cash value today, the things that are helpful that these guys are saying in terms of our own growth, but not looking at the long-term implications of, okay, but if this underlying physicalism gets root in our churches, it's going to be a problem on so many different fronts.

And that's, you know, so I'm concerned with the long game, not the today, how are these authors helping people in the practical dimensions of what they write. Yeah, I can see how it would deny the atoning sacrifice because if physicalism is true, then the human soul is a product of the physical realm. This is just to exaggerate a little bit to make a point for the listeners. Well, if that's the case, that when Jesus died on the cross, then there's no resurrection afterwards because the continuity of his existence ceases because the two natures, the divine and the human, are broken. And this would mean that the person of Christ no longer exists because if materialism is true and the physical brain ceases, then the soul mind ceases and the properties of Christ's essence and the divine essence are no longer ascribed to the single person.

This means that the continuity is lost and broken, and therefore Christ, when he is resurrected, is not the same person, but a recreated being. This is a serious issue. Yeah, and let me offer the positive side here. So yes, this is a problem.

We've got to address it. But this gives us an opportunity as the people of God to think more clearly about what we are. And I use in the book the illustration that what a thing is determines how it flourishes. And so in as far as we have a proper understanding of what we are, we will flourish. I use the illustration about the tree in my backyard that's flourishing because it's got all the right environmental factors and moisture and everything else that helps trees flourish.

But if I plant my dog right next to that tree, she is not going to flourish because the nature of a dog requires a different environment to flourish than the nature of a elm tree. And so this gives us an opportunity as the church to think about, well, what are we, and therefore how do we really flourish? And I like to draw a continuum, and there are two extremes, and I'm trying to, in my book, find that middle ground because each extreme, I think, reacts to the other extreme. So this extreme we've been talking about is physicalism. It reduces the person to nothing but or fundamentally a material being.

The other extreme, though, is a radical dualism usually associated with Descartes. It's called Cartesian dualism often, which sees the spirit and the body as so superficially related that it's kind of irrelevant that we're in a body. In fact, it's better for us on this view to be away from the body because the body just holds us back. The physical realm, this world, just sullies us, and we want to be as free of it as we can.

And that's contrary to scripture as well. Scripture affirms the physical realm, affirms the body, affirms creation as good, affirms us as embodied in God's plan. And the final resurrection is that eternal embodiedness, which is how we were created to live.

And so I'm trying to find that middle ground and say, actually, from Aristotle, through Aquinas, through Dallas Willard, and my mentor J.P. Moreland, C.S. Lewis, and others, there is a middle ground, it's called holistic dualism, which says we are this deep, deep unity of soul and body such that what happens in our body affects our soul. This is why there are spiritual disciplines that involve our bodies, fasting or praying on our knees or what have you. Those are things that are bodily, but they affect our soul. On the other hand, the things in our soul affect our body.

As we have anxiety, we develop ulcers. So there's this two-way causal connection. And it really makes sense of then how we flourish by understanding both soul and body are important and understanding, therefore, how what we do in one realm, if you will, affects the other realm and leveraging that for our flourishing.

So there's a lot of, let's say, real estate to be had here, positively for us as believers and as we talk to the world beyond just critiquing and challenging the problems of physicalism that are being introduced by the neuro-theological conversation. Okay. Okay. Yeah.

So... I gave you a lot. No, no, that's good. That's good. I got it. I understood it. That's not a problem.

So I want to ask a question here because I'm just curious. So these neuro-theologians, you're telling me, and I don't want to misrepresent you or what they're saying, it seems to me that they are espousing simple materialism with property dualism. Is that the case? They are, and I want to be careful. I'm not sure they are aware that they're doing that.

Okay. The claims they make are pretty clear, but on the other hand, they will sometimes say one thing and then the other. So I work hard in the book to do my best to give a clear assessment of here's what overall they're saying. So most of what they're saying do seem to be physicalist in nature, reductive physicalists. We're just a body. So for instance, Thompson says that the terms mind and brain are pretty much synonymous. You can use one just same as the other, which is a physicalist view, that the mind is nothing but the brain. The immaterial is nothing but the material. Wilder says something about our character is formed by our brain, or our brains are what are attached to other persons and to God.

And so there are these pretty clear, physicalist claims, but sometimes they use words like emerge, which is more of a property dualism. We've got to break. We've got to break. Oh, man, this is bad.

It's really bad. Hey, folks, we'll be right back. After these messages, please stay tuned. It's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877-207-2276.

Here's Matt Slick. All right, everybody, welcome back to the show. Stan, are you still on?

I'm here. All right, so I just got to ask this. Have you challenged any of them to, these authors and preachers, have you challenged them to debates on this? Well, I'd really rather avoid the word debate. I'd love to have a conversation. The way I see it is as iron sharpens iron, so one of us believers can sharpen the other. And so, yes, I'd love to have a chance to engage in conversation to sharpen me and hopefully sharpen them in terms of their thinking. That's what we do as brothers who are engaged in these type of issues.

Having said that, I sent them both a copy of the book and asked them to give me their thoughts and see if we could have some conversations and haven't heard back, haven't had a chance to pursue that, but that's something I'm very interested in doing if I could get a chance to do so because I think we can help one another in terms of being clearer in what it is to be human and therefore how we flourish and how we love God and love others better. Okay. Well, I got a question then. In this view, who creates the soul? Is it the product of biological generation or is it God producing us?

Great question. So there are three views of the origin of the soul historically. One is not within the realm of the Christian tradition. It's the eternality of the soul, right, where the soul is just going to exist and we have to get stuck in bodies, like that movie Soul that Disney just came out with, played with. But within the Christian tradition, there have been two views. As you all know, I'm sure, creationism, not to be confused with origin of life, but the idea that God creates a soul and implants it in a body at some point in time. And the other view is traducianism, that the soul is created as part of the generative act and procreation. And so both of those views are consistent, I think, with either the Cartesian dualism or the holistic dualism, although I argue in the book more consistent with the holistic dualism and I think with a biblical view of the person as this deep unity is a traducian view, that the soul comes to be at the moment of conception and actually it forms the body around it so that it's necessarily there from that moment of conception because it's the cause of the body.

There is no body without a soul. On the other view, the body could exist for any number of days, weeks or months until God implants a soul. So it's more reasonable, I think, to take a traducian view, but I'm not going to go to the mat on that. There are good folks disagreeing with me on that. It's not super clear in scripture, but I think it makes more sense of all the data and so that's where I come down.

Yeah, I'm with you. Traducianism makes more sense. Creationism has inherent problems, logical problems to it with an ontos alteration through the nature of God implanting.

When does it do that? When does God do that? Well then, prior to that, abortions could be justified and so we have some serious issues there. And the eternal view, of course... As well as you're alluding to... Go ahead.

I'm sorry. No, go ahead. Yeah, as well as you're alluding to it, it does seem to bump up into conflict with God resting from creation on the seventh day and in this creationist sense, he's always creating these new souls that doesn't quite fit and since we are following creatures, he's creating souls that are inherently sinful and that's problematic. And so I think for all those theological reasons, traducianism makes more sense as well.

But again, I'm not going to go to the mat on it. There are good folks who disagree. Yeah, now, so... I've got so many questions I want to ask you because it seems to me that if they're going to hold to a materialistic view, they can't trust their view. So a neurotheologian, if I'm understanding it correctly, affirms property dualism and materialism that it's a self-refuting position because they couldn't melt their own positions, correct, because it just reduces the chemical reactions. Have they addressed this kind of problem at all?

No, they don't. And again, they're practitioners, so they're really interested not in the ontology here, the anthropology, what we are question, as much as how then do we live. My problem is that because of their writings, though they're having good things to say about how we live, they are grounding it in a physicalist anthropology, which then is just seeping more and more into the Church as people are reading their books and saying, well, wait a minute, okay, this means there must not really be a soul, or at least an enduring soul. But they're not trying to address those. They're just sort of, and I can't speak to the motivation, but they're talking about that ontology as a way to then get to, therefore, let's understand the brain better so we can live better. And that's why the anthropology and their writings is a little bit, well, it's very weak, and it's a little bit contradictory, and so that's what I'm trying to do in my book is get clear. Okay, so what is being said, and therefore, what are the implications? Right, yeah, so the presuppositions they have lead to other propositions, which lead to minutiae and theological ramifications.

This is a very serious issue. It's Christian humanism, though that term, I've used it, it's already in play out there, and it meets a slight difference of meanings, but I call Christian humanism the humanist philosophy creeping into the Church, which is becoming more evident, and I've got examples of that, but it would seem to be an example of it as well. I've got a guy called up, Alex, and he's a friend of mine in Florida, but he just has a question. Have you ever read Transhumanism and the Image of God? He wants to know that. I've not read it. I'm familiar with transhumanism, and it's one of those issues that this conversation has direct bearing on, because if we are a nature, a human nature, there's nothing that can be transhuman by definition, because natures are fixed. You know, people, human people, they'll become angels. That's a different type of being. It's a different nature.

If we are not a nature, or if we're not a human nature that's this reality, this ontological reality, then there can be a trans in the sense that we can mutate into something else, but given a commitment to us having a human nature that would be metaphysically impossible. It really comes down to whether the difference between us and other types of things is a difference in kind or in degree. If it's just a difference in degree, we can get more and more complex and become some other type of thing. If the difference between us and other things is a difference of kind, then that's a chasm you couldn't jump on. Right.

Oh, man. I've actually, by the way, published on this in an academic journal, if the listener's interested, on biological essentialism. That's best the issue, that we are biologically essentially human, not just intentionally human, and could become something else. Yeah, we can't become something else because the properties emanate from the ontos of the ontos changes. The properties cease.

There's no continuity. Right. Exactly.

Exactly. Yeah, I try and teach people about that and why Jehovah's Witness theology is incorrect. This really is profoundly important in the church. I am so glad that you had, I don't want to say the wisdom, I don't want to give you glory, but I'm glad that God anointed you and opened your mind that you could tackle this.

It needs to be addressed because when I debate atheists, I use the same arguments I'm thinking about using against the neurotheologians, the same thing. Yeah, sure, sure. And to put a point on it for those of us in the community of faith, you know, your listeners are probably pretty familiar with Dallas Willard. I've mentioned him a few times. When he was in his last few months, he called J.P. Moreland, his protégé, my mentor, to his bedside and said, he tells this story actually in his eulogy of Dallas at Dallas' memorial service. It's online.

You can find it easily. But Dallas said, you know, as I'm nearing the end, there are two main concerns I have. And the point was, J.P., you know, I want you to continue carrying the torch for these things. And the first was that the spiritual formation movement would not be grounded on more and more solid theological and philosophical foundations.

In other words, it will go off the rails because we aren't able to think well and more and more deeply, more and more sophistication about the nature of the soul and its relationship to the body from both theology and philosophy. So, you know, all I'm doing is translating because there are some amazing Christian scholars who are working on these issues at very high levels, publishing in the top journals and publishing houses. And so I stand on their shoulders and I'm thankful for their call and service to the kingdom.

And I'm just trying to translate it for the broader Christian community that might not be familiar with those journals or books or be trained to read them, but can read what I'm writing because it's more a broader, popular level. Yes. Are you familiar with the New Apostolic Reformation? To some degree, yes. Spiritual formation is a buzzword within the NAR. Oh, is that right?

Yeah. It doesn't mean that, you know, because they use the same terms, it means the same thing. But spiritual formation, altering our awareness and our ability through spiritual means. And it's a pseudo-Christian kind of Eastern mystic kind of thing that occurs.

Okay, interesting. Oh yeah, the New Age movement is alive and well. And it has crept into the Christian church a lot. Yeah, I'm using the term the way Dallas Willard and others would use it, and it really is related to what I've been speaking about here, that there is a certain telos or end toward which we naturally are moving. In other words, we're created in God's image and with a certain nature that as we grow and mature, it moves toward a natural maturity, right?

So we see it physically. Unhindered, children grow up to be adults. Emotionally, we grow, and when we're two, we might throw a temper tantrum. If we're 12, we're still throwing a temper tantrum. We're not where we ought to be. There's a normativity, right? Well, spiritually, there's a maturity that is normal or natural, that as we come to Christ, we are more and more formed in His image until eventually, we never get there in this life, but finally in glory, we are fully reflecting His image, His nature, His character.

So that spiritual formation, we're being formed more and more in His image as we mature in Christ. Oh man, there's so much to talk about. We should get you on again. I want to talk about this some more because we're out of time. We've got 10 seconds and music's going to start. I want to talk about the issue of the ultimate. It seems the ultimate is not the Trinity, but the ultimate is neuroscience.

That's an oversimplified statement, but I'm wondering about that. There's the music right there. We're out of time. I tell you what, let's communicate off air sometime, and let's see if I can get you back on because we need to go through this some more. This is really good, all right? Hey, we've got to go, brother. Absolutely.

Okay, Stan? Thank you. All right, man.

God bless. We'll be in touch. Okay. All right, bye. All right, bye. Hey, folks, I hope you enjoyed that. I really did. I was holding back. There's so much I want to talk about. Hey, we'll talk to you tomorrow. God bless everybody. Bye.