Findings - A journal of reformational thought

The third issue of Findings has just come out and includes my review of Chris Watkin's Thinking Through Creation. The other contributions look well worth reading through. There is not an easy way to quickly view the contents of each issue, so I will provide links below to the first three issues.

Findings 1

Findings 2

Findings 3

Animals and Philosophy

I have a hunch that animals could be a really interesting and important challenge to any philosophical conception of reality. I mean a kind of "test case" for the validity of a philosophical position. How many philosophers have made room for animals in their philosophical reflections? Not many, or at least very few have given them serious consideration. When they have it has been in relation to questions of ethics. That is important. But what would a serious consideration of animals mean for areas like epistemology and ontology?

In his book on the message of the book of Job, A Battle for Righteousness, Klaas Popma devotes his final section to the animals and claims that it is here where we must find the solution to understanding the book. Here's a quote:

"Both wild and domesticated animals live their own lives in their domains which remain, for people, impenetrable. For those humans who consider themselves the most important of creatures, the instruction to look to the animal world for understanding God, is utterly humiliating. Animals who are, after all, our fellow creatures, by their own incomprehensibility, point to the incomprehensibility of God. Those who believe in the perspicuity of being only need to look at the animals to see how incredibly foolish that belief is. God has made all these animals and for no other reason than that it was His good pleasure to do so; for God always does what pleases Him. God created the animals because He took delight in doing so." (263)

His comment on the foolishness of the belief in the "perspicuity of being" is more than a hint of philosophical significance. Perhaps a worry we might have is that the very incomprehensibility of the animals is enough to set them aside in our attempts to throw light on the nature of reality from out of our philosophical thinking. Or, are we tempted by the thought that animals being part of the natural world - they don't have souls, or reason or whatever - any mystery regarding them is just a gap waiting for scientific elucidation. Hopefully any reformational philosophy would reject the second option. As for the first, even a reflection on the shape of such incomprehensibility, could prove beneficial in filling out our ontology and epistemology. Also, should we not say that incomprehensibility is not the full picture, there is also some knowledge as implied in Proverbs 12:10.

The second quote is from a long footnote in a paper originally given as a lecture and since turned into a book. This actually goes further and considers our response to plants and even human made artefacts. My claim is that if even plants can make some kind of demand on our (moral) consideration, then might it be worth considering what demand on our philosophical reflections the life of animals might make. The point at the end about how we should "treat every kind of thing in accordance with its nature" must also apply to philosophy as well as to more 'practical' pursuits.

Christine Korsgaard "Fellow Creatures: Kantian Ethics and Our Duties to Animals"

“Why shouldn’t the argument of this essay extend even further down the line of the different senses of “natural good” or “good for”? Our moral values spring from reflective endorsement of the natural good we are inclined to pursue as animals, but that natural good in turn depends on the sort of good to which plants are oriented, and that in turn to the general, functional capacity for having a good. Why shouldn’t we think that implicit in our endorsement of our own self-concern is a concern for the good of anything that has a good? At the risk of being thought a complete lunatic, let me admit that I am tempted by this thought. There is no reason to believe that “moral standing” is an on-off notion: perhaps it comes in degrees or kinds. We respond normatively to plants; a drooping plant in need of a drink seems to present us with a reason to water it; a sapling growing from what seems to be almost sheer rock makes us want to cheer it on. Is this because we cannot help animistically imagining that plant experiences its good? Is it because, as I say in the text, the line between plants and animals is unclear? Or is it perhaps because the shared condition of life itself elicits these responses? Or could it even be that we have duties, not only to our fellow creatures, but to our fellow entities? Granted, it sounds absurd to suggest that we might have duties to machines, yet still there is something in the far outer reaches of our normative thought and feeling that corresponds even to this. A general discomfort in the face of wanton destructiveness, a tendency to wince when objects are broken, an objection to the neglect or abuse of precision tools that isn’t rooted completely in the idea of economic waste… Again it might be suggested that such feelings result from a kind of animistic imagination, that we imagine that the tool feels the badness of being broken. But what is it that calls forth that animistic imagination, unless it is a distant form of respect for functional identity itself, a condition we share with all entities? I do not mention these possible consequences of my of argument in order to insist on them, but only to affirm that if someone thinks this follows I wouldn’t regard that as a reduction to absurdity. Perhaps we should treat every kind of thing in accordance with its nature, in accordance with the kinds of good and bads to which it is subject.” (p.33)

Dooyeweerd's warning against fascism and communism

A.R.J.A.

It is with ardent conviction that I acceded to the request of the board of A.R.J.A. to draw attention to the work of the Young Antirevolutionary Study Clubs.

There still is far too little awareness among us that our whole movement is caught up in the crucible of our great and anxious times which will reduce to ashes everything that does not survive that fiery trial.

There is also too little awareness among us that a task greater than ever before is waiting for us in the service of our King Christ Jesus to propagate our principles with deepened knowledge and true inspiration in a world where the spirit of darkness is at work.

It is alarming to see how in our own circles many young people and even older folk are swept along by fascist and communist currents, how many are spiritually uprooted and become an easy prey to the radical and demonic powers which since the world war have been threatening Europe with spiritual dissolution.

In the name of our God we must adjure our young people: 

Arm yourself with the full armour of faith and prayer, and deepen your knowledge for the political struggle that awaits you!

Do not think – for God’s sake, do not think for a moment – that we can just continue to live off the strengths that we have amassed in the past. Let the terror of the Lord enter our souls as we face the mighty signs of the times!

Young people! Remember your calling before it is too late.

Your place is with the young guard of study clubs who have realized that a spiritual standstill will mean our spiritual demise.

In our day, when such tremendously complicated questions are disturbing mankind, the intellectual equipment of those who went before you no longer suffices.

The propaganda of unbelief, the spirit of revolution – they are today armed with weapons that are extremely dangerous to all who do not know their effect and are not familiar with their toxic subtleties.

Against these only prayer avails, and a faith which glows with zeal for the cause of the Lord, but which will then irresistibly drive you on to whet the weapons with which you will soon wage the warfare of your principles.

H. Dooyeweerd  

column in De Standaard  

Tues, 29 Nov. 1932  

[4 months before Hitler’s coup] 

Translated by Harry van Dyke 

The Laymen's Lounge

Jason Estopinal is posting some great stuff over at his website The Laymen's Lounge.

As part of a series on "You should know about ..." the most recent is an excellent introduction to Herman Dooyeweerd by Steve Bishop and Gregory Baus.

Steve Bishop has also contributed another on Dirk Vollenhoven and one on Neo-Calvinism.

I have even got in on the act with a piece on sphere sovereignty.

So dig in and enjoy.

Further Reading

The sections 15-19 introduce the basic of the theory of the modal spheres. Dooyeweerd gives his fullest account of this theory in part I of the second volume of his New Critique (pp.3-426). Calvin Seerveld gives a helpful overview of Dooyeweerd’s modal theory in “Dooyeweerd’s legacy for aesthetics: Modal law theory” in The Legacy of Herman Dooyeweerd edited C.T. McIntire 1985 pp.41-79. Two other articles worth reading are D M F Strauss “The best known but least understood part of Dooyeweerd's philosophy” in Journal for Christian Scholarship 42 (2006): 61-80, and H G Geertsema “Analytical and Reformational Philosophy: Critical reflections regarding R. van Woudenberg’s meditation on ‘Aspects’ and ‘Functions’” Philosophia Reformata 69 (2004): 53-76. Most introductions to reformational philosophy will contain a section on the theory of the modal spheres, however for these sections I found Jonathan Chaplin’s discussion in Herman Dooyeweerd: Christian philosopher of state and civil society 2011, pp.55-61 particularly helpful. See also Hendrik Hart Understanding our World: An Integral Ontology (1984, University Press of America) chapter 4 particularly pp.190-198. For the historical  details concerning the development of the theory in Dooyeweerd see R.D. Henderson Illuminating Law: The construction of Herman Dooyeweerd’s philosophy 1918-1928 and Marcel E Verburg Herman Dooyeweerd: the life and work of a Christian philosopher, for Vollenhoven see John H. Kok “Social spheres and law spheres” in Philosophy as Responsibility edited by Ronald Kuipers, also Anthony Tol Philosophy in the making: D.H.Th. Vollenhoven and the emergence of reformed philosophy. Dirk Stafleu’s development of modal theory in terms of relation frames is explained in his The Open Future [http://www.mdstafleu.nl/427446844] as well as many other books and papers that can be found at www.mdstafleu.nl. §20 on time draws on Andre Troost (2012:123-125).

The discussion of sensory perception (§24) is largely based on Dooyeweerd’s analysis in NC II 370-374 and Encyclopedia of the Science of Law Vol. 1 185-195 (referred to in the text as ESL, I). Henk Geertsema gives a very helpful analysis of Dooyeweerd’s views in “Dooyeweerd on Knowledge and Truth” in Ways of Knowing Dordt Press, 2005 edited John H. Kok. The quote from J J Smart (§25) comes from his paper ‘Sensations and brain states’ Philosophical Review, vol.68 (Smart 1964). This explanation of the difference and connection between modal aspects and entities is based on Dooyeweerd ESL, I 204-206.

The definition of idionomy at the start of §26 is taken from Ouweneel 2014a 87.  The examples and claims of §27 concerning animals were based on Stafleu “Being human in the cosmos” Philosophia Reformata 56:2 (1991) pp.101-131. For the contrast between animals and humans use was also made of some examples of Antheunis Janse kindly supplied by Chris Gousmett. The discussion of encapsis in §28 draws heavily on Ouweneel 2014a 88-90.

Klapwijk’s example of a lie detector (§17) can be found in his Purpose in the living world? Creation and emergent evolution Cambridge, 2008 p. 126. This links with the later discussion in §30. A very important article for understanding a reformational approach to many of these issues is Henk Geertsema “Embodied Freedom” Koers Vol. 71, no.1 (2011): 33-58. Examples and quotes from Selim Berker “The Normative Insignificance of Neuroscience,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 37, no. 4 (2004): 293–329

The discussion of philosophical anthropology draws from a number of sources. The main ones being:

Dooyeweerd, Herman (1942) “De leer van de mensch in der Wijsbegeerte der Wetsidee” translated as “The theory of Man: Thirty two propositions on anthropology”. Gerrit Glas (2010) “Christian Philosophical Anthropology” Philosophia Reformata 75:2, 141-189. Ouweneel, Willem J. (2014) “A Christian Anthropology” chapter 6 in Wisdom for Thinkers. Stafleu, Dirk (1991) “Being Human in the Cosmos” Philosophia Reformata 56:2 101-131. Strauss, D M F (2014) “Soul and Body: Transcending the dialectical intellectual legacy of the West with an integral biblical view?” In die Skriflig 48(1), Art. #1815. The example on the thyroid gland comes from Strauss with addition on hypothyroidism from David Hanson. The views expressed in §34 were considerably influenced by B J van der Walt’s At Home in God’s World Section C on “A multidimensional Christian view of being human” as well as Cornelis Vonk’s The Dead Know Nothing translated by Gerrit L Wassink (Alken Press, 1998). The quote from J.P Moreland & William Lane Craig can be found on page 288 of their Philosophical Foundation for a Christian Worldview (IVP, 2003). The reference to John Cooper is to his very valuable discussion of the biblical material in Body, Soul and Life Everlasting: Biblical anthropology and the Monism-Dualism debate (Eerdmans, 2000 2^nd edition) which defends substance dualism. The discussion of first person, second person and third person perspectives draws on Henk Geertsema’s work in particular “Creation Order in the Light of Redemption (1): Natural Science and Theology” in The Future of Creation Order Vol. 1 edited by Gerrit Glas (Springer, 2018) .

The section on faith and religion (§ 35) draws more on Vollenhoven than Dooyeweerd see John Kok “Vollenhoven and ‘Scriptural Philosophy” PR 1988 53:2 and Vollenhoven “Faith”. Interestingly the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas makes some remarks in his work Totality and Infinity that confirm Vollenhoven’s notion of the transcosmic relation. See the section on “Creation” in the conclusions which begin with the sentence “Theology imprudently treats the idea of the relation between God and the creature in terms of ontology.” (293). On theology (§ 36) see Willem J, Ouweneel’s What then is Theology? An introduction to Christian Theology Paideia Press 2014 and Renato Coletto “Encyclopaedic models in the Kuyperian tradition (Part 3: towards a network-model)” Tydskrif vir Christelike Wetenskap 2012: pp.43-63. §37 draws on Hendrik Hart Understand our World pp.318-324, Danie Strauss Philosophy: Discipline of the Disciplines pp.188-205, and Henk Geertsema “Wolterstorff and the philosophy of religion. About being and creation” in Essays in honour of Nicholas P. Wolterstorff. Edited by Henk E.S. Woldring. VU University Press 2008, 51-60. The discussion of the Euthyphro dilemma is indebted to Roy Clouser who has written incisively on this topic on the Thinknet discussion list.

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(37) God and philosophy

Theoretical analysis proceeds through the modal aspects and so it is only possible to analyse what is within the bounds of created reality. God is the origin of creation including our ability to think. The forming of concepts requires universal conditions or features that can be grasped in our thought. This means that having a concept of God would imply that there is an order for being-a-God, i.e. a law-for-being-a-God. Such a situation involves the contradiction that God, the origin of all things, would be viewed as being subject to God’s own law for creation.

This way of thinking about God is however common and can be designated with the term onto-theology. Ontology is the name given to philosophical theory that analyses the basic characteristics of reality, of what there is. Onto-theology then includes the being of God in this analysis. This can be traced back to Parmenides who made an all-encompassing connection between thinking and being such that the structure of being and the structure of thought are believed to mirror each other. Apart from the problems that arise through separating being and thinking and then trying to understand how and why they might correspond to each other, this position should be rejected on the basis that thinking belongs within being.  The consequence of an onto-theological approach is that questions about God are discussed and incorporated into the general theoretical framework of an ontology where being is analysed in terms of concepts and logic. On such a view philosophical thought is considered competent to discover structures to which God himself is subject. This involves taking a stance that is supposedly outside of the creator-creation relationship and so must take us beyond any creatureliness. Reformational philosophy does not recognise such a competence for philosophy, nor does it accept the possibility of such a stance outside creation. Philosophy cannot judge reality, it must discover, analyse, understand and respect what is given, this applies even more so to God’s self-revelation. 

One way this onto-theological approach gets worked out is in the so-called proofs of God’s existence. Dooyeweerd gives a brief discussion of the cosmological arguments of Thomas Aquinas (NC II, 39-42) where he shows that the argument will either start from a metaphysical view of causality which already includes the need for a pure actuality (identified as God), or it will understand causality in terms of human experience and so bring God’s being the cause or origin of the world under the conditions of a particular modal sense of causation. The former can hardly stand as a satisfactory proof and the latter creates various problems due to subjecting God to created conditions while simultaneously treating an aspect of creation as absolute.

A particularly clear issue where the question of God being subjected to creational laws is at stake is the Euthyphro dilemma first expressed by Plato in his dialogue of that name. The modern version goes like this: "Is the morally good loved by God because it is good, or is it good because it is loved by God". The first option makes God dependent and subservient to morality which is then understood as a standard that exists independently of God. The second option would seem to make morality arbitrary such that if God willed murder then murder would be good.

The solution to this dilemma is a correct understanding of the Christian confession of creation. We must insist from the outset that God has created everything that exists other than himself, and so reject the first option of the dilemma. However we can also reject the second option because the standards for good and evil are real factors of the world as created by God. From within creation there is nothing arbitrary about the command against murder, when God commands us not to murder this is revelatory of the way God made the world. The problem is that when we ask whether God “could” have commanded murder the word “could” is ambiguous. The only meaning it can have for us as creatures in the world God has made is restricted to the possibilities built into this world. It is important to see that we are here talking about the law-side of reality. We can certainly think about different responses from the subject-side and so the different kinds of “worlds” that would result from our choosing to murder or to resist the temptation to violence. The dilemma can only work then, if we project this “could” to a world of possibilities outside of this actual law-structured world. The problem with this is that we cannot think or imagine in a way that is completely outside of the actual law-structure since that is what gives us the possibility to think and imagine in the first place. What we will end up doing in the attempt to consider what is possible in an absolute sense is that we will keep our understanding of the world and its possibilities fixed for some creational laws while imagining a change in others. This is what is really happening when people ask if God could have commanded us to murder, or could God make 2+2=5, or create a round square etc. What this misses out is the indissoluble coherence of all creational laws so that it is impossible to conceive of a change in one creational law with all else staying fixed. A change of one law would require changes in all the others. As such it throws us back to the notion of a world of possibilities outside of this actual world, and so outside our own possibility to think. We can see then that God must be understood as the true origin of our world, and while God accommodates himself to the world he has made, we should never understand God as being subjected to the laws and conditions of his creation.

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Further Reading

(36) Faith and Theology

We should say something here about the study of faith which is theology. First attention needs to be made to the difference between the practical character of Christian life and faith and theology as a science, a theoretical enterprise.  It is unfortunate that some like to speak of the “theology” of the Apostles, or to think of the Bible as a book of theology.  For example, Paul’s use of the word “doctrine” (eg in 2 Timothy 3:10) indicates something that has to be “followed” not something that is primarily an object of academic study.  When as Christians we read and meditate on the Bible we do so for a practical purpose, to enter into a closer relationship with the Lord, to hear God’s Word in our hearts, to not only hear, but also to do the Word of God.  As such the difference between ordinary “Bible study” and theological study is very great, Ouweneel compares it to the difference between the eater and the chemist in the case of bread (Ouweneel 2014, 5). 

The relationship between theology and philosophy has been somewhat fraught in the history of western thought.  Since theology is a human activity it is far from static and undergoes constant development as can be seen from a comparison of a standard theological work from the 17^th century and one from the 21^st century.  Theology cannot avoid the powerful influence of “the course of this world” (Eph. 2:2), the spirits of the age or Zeitgeist.  The spirit of each age comes to fullest theoretical expression within the philosophies of each age, whether pagan Greek, scholastic, enlightenment or postmodern.  This, alongside the fact that theology is a special science, means that theology cannot avoid philosophical presuppositions. Unfortunately, one of the most persistent views among orthodox theologians concerning the relation between theology and philosophy is the scholastic separation between philosophy as essentially natural and religiously neutral academic pursuit and theology as uniquely Christian and sacred.  The reformational view is that philosophy is not religiously neutral and plays an important role in relation to the special sciences this means that the development of a Christian philosophy is vital for the continual task of a theoretically elaborated Christian theology.  There is a danger here though of a one-sided emphasis since philosophy never stands on its own but must be informed by the special sciences and this is no different for theology. This means that Christian theology may also play a role in serving the development of Christian philosophy.  Here we can recommend the work of Renato Coletto who has developed a “network” model, based on the Christian value of mutual service, of how the different sciences relate to each other including theology and philosophy. The persistent view that Christian thinking, in all its forms, is really essentially and only theological thinking is perhaps one of the biggest barriers to the genuine reformation of scholarship as envisioned by reformational philosophy.

The classic definition of theology, deriving from its name, is that theology is the science that studies God. This cannot be accepted on a reformational view since science proceeds through theoretical analysis that takes one of the modal aspects as its lens and God is not subject to the modal spheres, but rather is their creator. This means that God cannot be subjected to theoretical analysis. This would pose a serious problem if we restricted knowledge to theoretical knowledge as it would imply that knowledge of God would be impossible. However we have already indicated that religion is fundamental to our lives as made in God’s image and as always already responding to God in everything we do. As such knowledge of God is both as natural and as mysterious as knowledge of ourselves. While this knowledge can be considered theoretically, it is not itself theoretical. As with the difference between reading the Bible as followers of Jesus Christ and studying the Bible theoretically, which may be one part of our whole of life following of Jesus, there is a similar difference between knowing God and theoretically reflecting on that knowledge. We shall turn to the related question of God and philosophy in the next section.

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Further Reading

(35) Faith and religion

The basic thesis of reformational philosophy concerning religion is that it is as broad as life itself and does not designate some limited area of life, or even something optional.  God is just as close to us in our ordinary life as when we are involved in what often gets referred to as the ‘religious’ moments of life. Our working and our resting are just as much given to us by God as our praying and reading the Bible. In this sense religion involves our full existence Coram Deo. It can be understood as being one side of the covenantal relationship. The primary side involves God’s relation to us. God calls us into existence and sets us a task in the world, to reflect God’s goodness to the world as image bearers. This task comes to us also as a command, that is the great love command, to love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and secondly to love our neighbours as ourselves. From our side we answer this call and command, that is the secondary side of the covenant and is religion. In this way religion can be said to have two basic directions; true and false religion, which is to say, the holding to and the breaking of the covenant. What is important to note is that as the response side of our relationship to God religion helps us to consider the covenantal relationship between the Creator and His creation. This relationship is not a connection that has its basis in some region of the cosmos, it is rather a “transcosmic” relationship, as Vollenhoven has put it. This is because although as creatures we belong to the cosmos God as creator does not. This has implications for the way we think philosophically about God and creation since it has been common to include both within being and so within ontology, the study of being.

We have said that the most characteristic feature of humanity is the religious centrality of humankind(§ 32).  Religion is not something to be added to, or taken on, by human nature but is integral. This is sometimes referred to as direction in distinction from structure (§5).  Direction concerns the opposition between good and evil, obedience to the true God which must struggle against disobedience and orientation towards false gods. This opposition occurs in humans and since it has to do with the direction of human life, with good and evil, it is not to be found in entities, nor are they modal functions. To find the proximate origin of good and evil we must look to that which directs these functions for good and evil. It is with the discovery of the Biblical conception of the heart we arrive at the central issue of our lives as humans.

In reformational philosophy a distinction is made between faith, as one modal function, and religion as the whole person in response to God. Faith is built into the order of creation as an irreducible and universal human function (§ 16).  It is therefore a function common to all people.  As such, it is not something additional that only Christians or ‘religious’ people have, something special, mystical or irrational. We recognise "faith" in the sense, primarily, of an active function of the person in the sense of "believing".  It is taken to be that last modal aspect to which all previous aspects anticipate and which therefore also refers back to all the other modal aspects.  Whether someone is Christian or not, or whether they hold to a religion or not, everybody possesses faith.  This is so because believing belongs to the structure of human life which, in spite of important differences in realization, is the same for all. Faith is not identical with the heart, but is determined by the heart in its direction towards good or evil, i.e. in obedience to the law of love or not. In other words: the whole person is religious, and our life is a walk before the face of God in obedience or disobedience, faith is one avenue of expression of religion.  Also since faith is part of the structure of being human it is not something that was lost with the fall and therefore is not something that must be added on as a gift of grace, rather grace restores our faith life to the correct direction of believing God’s Word.

Another important facet that must be understood is that faith is not just a matter of the individual.  As with the other functions of being human faith finds its expression in community with others, in this way it is possible to speak of faith-communities.  Just as the heart must be distinguished from the faith function, so too the church as a faith community with its local and regular meetings must be distinguished from the body of Christ which is a religious community that must find its expression in all the activities of being human.  The faith community is the subject-subject relation of the faith aspect. Our faith-life also has its typical objects such as the sacraments (§ 23). The sacraments remain what they are as subjects, not being active in the faith function, however they are taken up into human faith life and become a sign and seal to serve as a proclamation of what God has done.  Since the faith aspect comes last it refers back to all the other modal aspects.  There is the joy and sorrow of faith, its thinking and knowing, its sacrifice, and its trust etc. Faith-life has its own distinctive law which is a norm, that is to trustingly believe in every word that comes from God. Just as we need to analytically discern the elements of God’s revelation and understand the meaning expressed in the words of scripture so we need to trustingly believe the promises it contains.  While the Bible functions in all the modal aspects, whether as subject or object, it is only with true faith that it can become the bread of life that sustains us in service of God and neighbour.

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Further Reading

(34) We are not body and soul

The notion of substance has been very influential when it comes to understanding the nature of being human. For example, the great reformer John Calvin understood being human as a combination of a soul and a body. The soul is to be understood as an immortal yet created essence which is the nobler part of a human. He explains that “although properly it (the soul) is not spatially limited, still, set in a body, it dwells there as in a house” (ICR, I, 15, 6). More recently the Christian philosophers J.P Moreland and William Lane Craig have stated that it is “clear that the Scriptures teach that the soul/spirit is an immaterial component different from the body”. Once the framework of substance is in place the option narrows down to either monism (one substance) or dualism (two substances). Reformational philosophy rejects substance dualism, but it does not thereby endorse substance monism, rather it rejects the substance framework itself (see §31).

Now while recognising that reformational philosophy unanimously rejects any notion of a substantial and immortal soul, it should be noted that there are a variety of positions on how to understand the religious depth of human life and its concrete expression both structurally and in terms of traditional theological views concerning death, the intermediate state and the resurrection. In this section I will try to outline what I consider to be the view most consistent with a Biblical-reformational trajectory aiming to work from the creation-fall-redemption motive, however the following is probably the most tentative section of this introduction. My comments will be guided by three claims: the whole human person lives, the whole person dies, and the whole person is resurrected.

Firstly the human person lives as an integral unity. There are many different terms in scripture used to describe the human person, ‘heart’, ‘soul’, ‘spirit’, ‘flesh’, ‘body’, ‘image’ etc. these always describe the whole human person from a specific angle, they are not part of a structural, or theoretical, account setting out the components of being human. We have already seen that the Bible uses the term “heart” to refer to the centre of human existence in response to God. Rather than our soul being something immaterial the scripture speaks of satisfying our soul with food and drink (Psalm 78:18, Luke 12:19). Far from being immortal and imperishable our soul, or Nephesh in the Old Testament, signals the precarious position of life being subject to harm and danger as well as the need for deliverance (Ex. 4:19; 1 Sam. 23:15, Jos. 9:24, 2 Kings 7:7). The soul can be destroyed and die (Jos. 10:28, 30, 32, 35, 37, 39, Ez. 18:4, 20), and so also could be saved from danger and death (Jer. 51:8, Jos. 2:13, Ps 17:13). In the New Testament the term ‘soul’ (psyche) and the adjective ‘soulish’ (psychikos) can even have a negative connotation as in 1 Corinthians 15 where Paul contrasts our present mortal/corruptible body as a psychikos (natural) body, in contrast to our future immortal resurrection body as a pneumatikos (spiritual) body. Here the focus is clearly on the whole embodied person leaving no room for a conception of an immaterial soul.

Secondly the whole person really dies at the moment of death. When we understand this it is not so surprising that in the Bible the term soul can be used to refer to a dead person (Lev. 19:28; 21:1, 11; 22:4; Num. 5:2; 6:6, 11). Further the scriptures clearly teach that death is really death, that dead people know nothing and do nothing (Job 14:21; Psalm 6:6; 115:17; 146:4; Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10; John 9:4; Acts 2:29). Corlinus Vonk has also argued this point from God’s warning (Gen 2:17) that death would be the result of disobedience. It is rather Satan who contradicted this saying that death would not really happen (Gen. 3:4), the theory that the soul survives after death detracts somewhat from the seriousness of death as the punishment for sin (Rom. 6:23; James 1:15). In response to the question “Are Abraham, Isaac and Jacob dead or alive right now?” Vonk asks the counter question, among other comments and clarifications, “Is David dead or alive right now?”. Alongside the account of David’s death and burial in 1 Kings 2 he also refers to the apostle Peter in Acts 2:29 “Brothers, I can tell you confidently that the patriarch David died and was buried, and his tomb is here to this day”.

If the whole person goes down to the grave in death then it can rightly be said, thirdly, that it is the whole person who is raised from the dead. This is exactly the language used in scripture. There is no teaching that the body will be raised and so be reunited with the soul, rather the Bible speaks consistently that the dead are raised (see for example John 5:24-25, 11:23, Philippians 3:11, Acts 23:6, 24:21, 1 Corinthians15).

The preceding gives some indication of the worldview background to rejecting substance dualism, we now make some brief comments on why reformational philosophy has rejected substance dualism. In our discussion we have approach the question of our human nature in two different ways. Firstly we considered the existential question of what it means to be human (§32). On this we noted that it is a question that is more than philosophical, it concerns who we are in a fundamental sense and this is something that cannot be answered at a theoretical level. We are fundamentally creatures responding to God, our meaning as image bearers of God is found in our religious choice of direction towards or away from God. We are persons who know the difference between good and evil. This is our most basic understanding of what it means to be human and we can say that this takes a basically second-person perspective. Viewing the human person in terms of two substances body and soul takes a third-person theoretical perspective. There is nothing wrong as such with taking such a perspective, however it has been an emphasis of this introduction that one of the central insights of reformational philosophy has been to recognise the limits of a theoretical perspective for understanding the fulness of reality. The nature of our selfhood is a mystery to theoretical reflection, to talk in terms of an abstract notion of a thing is to not talk about the true nature of a human person, this is a further reason to reject a substantial soul.

The second approach we have taken is the structural analysis of the human body (§33). This fits with the theoretical third-person perspective and so suits better a comparison with substance dualism. As we have made clear, the reformational position rejects philosophical notions of substances and instead acknowledges the many-sidedness of the existence of all things and their interrelatedness within the order of creation. This presupposes an integral creation order which cannot be reduced to one substance nor split into two substances, further its critical view of theoretical thought will not allow for a view that takes humans as phenomenologically holistic at a surface level while reverting to ontological dualism at a more fundamental level as seems to be the position of John Cooper. Now while the reformational view of the many-sidedness of the person has been given a theoretical elaboration it still allows room for the first- and second-person perspective. This can be seen in that each modal aspect in relation to the human person must always be understood as an expression of the person and as tied up in subject-subject relations with other persons. Though the human person shares in this many-sidedness, we have also had to take notice of the ‘spiritual’ root unity of the person in terms of the human heart. This spiritual unity is existential, deeply personal and fundamentally related to persons, any attempt to find a unifying factor linked, as a separate substance, with reason, language, moral sense or any combination of the later modal aspects ends with a third-person perspective, an illegitimate reification, and so loses sight of ourselves as persons. To understand the human person in terms of properties, essences, or substances is to take us away from the personal as responding to God.

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