Chapter 22
Edward Fudge wrote a masterpiece. I have said so before and I will say it again. The Fire That Consumes is the most important modern defense of conditional immortality ever published, and its contribution to evangelical eschatology is enormous. Fudge changed the way an entire generation of Christians thinks about final punishment. He did so with careful scholarship, clear writing, and a deep love for Scripture. I am grateful for his work.1
But gratitude does not require silence when a mentor has made a significant oversight. In fact, it demands the opposite. The deepest kind of respect you can show a teacher is to take his work seriously enough to build on it—and to be honest when a part of the foundation needs repair. And when it comes to the biblical evidence for human nature—for what a human being actually is—Fudge’s oversight is not small. It is staggering.
In Chapters 20 and 21, we examined the passages Fudge did discuss and those he listed without exegesis. We found that even where he engaged the text, his treatment was shaped by physicalist assumptions that led him to flatten the meaning of key terms like nephesh (the Hebrew word often translated “soul”) and ruach (the Hebrew word for “spirit”). We found that his reliance on holistic monist scholars like Hans Walter Wolff and Aimo T. Nikolainen led him to consistently read these terms as referring to the “whole person” rather than allowing their full semantic range—which includes the immaterial self.2
But what we did not fully reckon with in those chapters is the sheer volume of biblical material that Fudge never addressed at all. Not superficially. Not in passing. Not even in a footnote. He simply did not engage it.
The number is forty-eight.
Forty-eight passages of Scripture that bear directly on the body-soul question—passages that speak of the soul departing the body, of the spirit returning to God, of the inner man being renewed while the outer man wastes away, of disembodied spirits who are conscious and active, of Jesus attributing experiences to His own soul, of the body being described as a tent or a temple for the spirit within—and Fudge addressed none of them.3
Now, someone might say: “Fudge was writing about final punishment, not anthropology. Why would he need to address all of those passages?” Fair question. But here is the problem. Fudge did not simply skip the topic of human nature. He devoted significant space to it. On pages 25–30 of The Fire That Consumes, he laid out a specific anthropological framework. He argued that the biblical words for “soul” and “spirit” do not refer to an immaterial substance but to the whole person or to a life-force that ceases at death. He drew on Wolff, Nikolainen, and Jan Bremmer to build a picture of “holistic” human nature in which there is no separable soul.4 He quoted Nikolainen approvingly: “Man is an indivisible whole. Seen from different points of view, he is by turns body, flesh and blood, soul, spirit, and heart. Each of these portrays a specific human characteristic, but they are not parts into which man may be divided.”5
In other words, Fudge built an anthropological foundation for his eschatology. He made claims about what a human being is. And then, when it came time to show that this anthropology was supported by the full witness of Scripture, he examined only a fraction of the relevant evidence—and it was a fraction heavily weighted toward passages that could be read through a physicalist lens.
The forty-eight passages he ignored are, overwhelmingly, passages that most naturally support substance dualism. That is not a coincidence. It is a pattern. And it is a pattern that demands our attention.
Before we walk through these forty-eight passages, we need to name the problem clearly. The issue is not that Fudge was dishonest. I do not believe he deliberately hid evidence. The issue is that his physicalist assumptions functioned as a filter—a lens that determined which passages seemed relevant to the body-soul question and which seemed beside the point. If you already believe that nephesh simply means “the whole person” and ruach simply means “life-force,” then a passage like Genesis 35:18—where Rachel’s nephesh is described as departing from her body as she dies—does not register as evidence for an immaterial soul. You read it and move on. It does not match your categories, so it does not appear in your argument.6
This is how presuppositions work. They do not make people dishonest. They make people blind to data that does not fit. And when we step back and look at the data Fudge missed, the pattern is unmistakable.
Consider what he left out. He left out every Old Testament narrative in which the soul or spirit is described as departing from the body at death and, in some cases, returning. He left out the entire category of Psalms and prophets in which the soul and the body are described as having distinct experiences—the soul thirsting while the flesh longs, the soul being bowed down while the body clings to the ground. He left out Jesus’ own attributions of sorrow and trouble to His soul. He left out Paul’s distinction between the inner man and the outer man, the body as a temple of the Spirit, and being absent in the body but present in spirit. He left out Peter’s description of the body as a tent that will be put off. He left out the author of Hebrews’ reference to “the spirits of just men made perfect.” He left out James’s stark declaration that “the body without the spirit is dead.”7
Think about that for a moment. If you were writing a section on what the Bible teaches about human nature, and you set aside these forty-eight passages, what kind of picture would emerge? Exactly the picture Fudge painted: a holistic, undivided, thoroughly physical human being with no separable soul. But if you put these passages back on the table—all of them—the picture changes dramatically.
Key Argument: Fudge’s anthropological conclusions are based on a sample of the biblical evidence that is not only incomplete but systematically skewed. The passages he engaged are disproportionately those that can be read through a physicalist lens. The passages he ignored are disproportionately those that most naturally support substance dualism. Any conclusion drawn from such a selective sample is unreliable.
I want to be precise about this. Of the roughly seventy-four passages we have examined in this book that bear on the body-soul question, Fudge discussed approximately twenty-two, listed approximately four without exegesis, and completely ignored approximately forty-eight.8 That means he left unexamined about sixty-five percent of the relevant biblical evidence. And the sixty-five percent he skipped is not a random assortment. It is the sixty-five percent that a dualist would most want to discuss.
No scholar can address every passage on every topic. I understand that. But when you build an anthropological framework and use it as the foundation for your eschatology, you have an obligation to reckon with the full range of evidence. The fact that Fudge did not do so—the fact that he left forty-eight body-soul passages completely unaddressed—is the most significant weakness in the anthropological dimension of The Fire That Consumes.
As John W. Cooper has argued, the decisive evidence for dualism in the Hebrew Bible comes not from the anthropological vocabulary alone but from the narratives about the dead—from what the Israelites believed happened to people at death and after death. Cooper acknowledges that the Hebrew terms nephesh, ruach, and basar (flesh) do not, by themselves, prove dualism. But he insists that the narratives presuppose it. When the Old Testament describes Rachel’s soul leaving her body, or the child’s soul returning to his body at Elijah’s prayer, or Samuel appearing consciously after death, or the Psalmist committing his spirit to God’s hands—these are not merely figures of speech. They are windows into what Israel actually believed about what happens at death.9 And what Israel believed, Cooper argues, is some form of dualism—not Platonic dualism, but a functional, holistic dualism in which the person is a body-soul unity during life but the soul can survive the dissolution of the body at death.10
Fudge never reckoned with that argument. Because he never reckoned with those passages.
We turn now to the passages themselves. I will organize them by category, matching the structure of the exegetical chapters in Parts II through IV of this book. For each passage, I will note its significance for the body-soul question in brief, since the detailed exegesis has already been provided in the chapter where each passage is “owned.” The goal here is not to repeat those exegetical arguments but to display the cumulative weight of what Fudge left unaddressed—and to let the reader see the pattern for themselves. I want you to feel the force of the evidence. Not any one passage in isolation, but all forty-eight together. Because when you see them lined up—organized by theme, stretching from Genesis through Revelation—the case is overwhelming. This is not a handful of ambiguous texts that can be explained away one at a time. This is the biblical witness on human nature, and the majority of it points in one direction.
These passages establish that God creates human beings with an immaterial dimension—a spirit or soul that is distinct from the physical body and that serves as the seat of understanding, moral awareness, and relationship with God.
1. Job 32:8 — “But there is a spirit in man, and the breath of the Almighty gives him understanding.” This verse attributes human understanding not to the brain or to bodily organs but to the ruach (spirit) that is in a person. The spirit is the channel through which God grants wisdom. Fudge ignored this passage entirely, even though it directly bears on whether the human spirit is merely a “life-force” or something more—a seat of genuine cognitive capacity given by God. (Treated in Chapter 5.)11
2. Psalm 139:14 — “I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well.” The Psalmist does not say “I know” in the generic sense. He says “my nephesh knows.” The soul is the knower. It has cognitive access to the wonder of God’s creation. This is exactly the kind of language that a dualist would expect and that a physicalist must explain away. Fudge never mentioned it. (Treated in Chapter 5.)12
3. Proverbs 20:27 — “The spirit of a man is the lamp of the LORD, searching all the inner depths of his heart.” Here the human spirit (neshama, a word closely related to ruach) functions as a kind of internal searchlight that God uses to illuminate the hidden recesses of a person’s moral life. The spirit is not just “breath” or “life-force.” It is an interior faculty that operates at the deepest level of the self. Fudge did not address this passage. (Treated in Chapter 5.)13
4. Zechariah 12:1 — “The LORD, who stretches out the heavens, lays the foundation of the earth, and forms the spirit of man within him.” God’s formation of the human spirit is placed in parallel with His creation of the heavens and the earth. The spirit is not an emergent property of physical complexity. It is something God actively forms within the human person—a distinct creative act. This passage is a powerful witness to creationism regarding the soul, and Fudge never engaged it. (Treated in Chapter 5.)14
5. Isaiah 31:3 — “Now the Egyptians are men, and not God; and their horses are flesh and not spirit.” This verse draws an ontological contrast between flesh and spirit. Horses are flesh—physical, material. God is spirit. And the point is that these are different kinds of being, not just different words for the same reality. This kind of flesh-spirit distinction is exactly what substance dualism predicts and exactly what physicalism must deny. Fudge never discussed it. (Treated in Chapter 5.)15
These are some of the most dramatic passages in the Old Testament. They describe the soul or spirit leaving the body at death and, in some cases, being restored to the body at resurrection. If these narratives are taken at face value, they presuppose that the soul is a separable entity—something that can exist apart from the body, even if only God has the power to bring it back.
6. Genesis 35:18 — “And so it was, as her soul was departing (for she died), that she called his name Ben-Oni.” Rachel names her son as her nephesh departs. The text describes the soul leaving the body at death. If nephesh here means simply “life” in the abstract, the narrative loses its force. But the Hebrew verb for “departing” (yatsa) indicates a going-out, a movement from one place to another. Cooper highlights this passage as a key Old Testament indicator that the Hebrews understood something of the person to leave the body at death.16 Fudge never touched it. (Treated in Chapter 6.)
7. 1 Samuel 28:8–15 — The witch of Endor summons Samuel, who appears in conscious, communicative form after his death. Whatever one makes of the mechanics of this event—whether God permitted it or performed it Himself—the text presents Samuel as existing consciously after death, aware of current events, and capable of speech. This is not the picture of a person who has simply ceased to exist. It is the picture of a disembodied soul. Fudge did not discuss this passage. (Treated in Chapter 6.)17
8. 1 Kings 17:21–22 — “Then he stretched himself out on the child three times, and cried out to the LORD and said, ‘O LORD my God, I pray, let this child’s soul come back to him.’ Then the LORD heard the voice of Elijah; and the soul of the child came back to him, and he revived.” The language could not be more explicit. The child’s nephesh left his body at death and returned to his body at resurrection. The soul is something that can be in the body, leave the body, and come back. This is dualism in narrative form. Fudge ignored it completely. (Treated in Chapter 6.)18
9. Ezekiel 37:5–6 — In the vision of the valley of dry bones, the bones come together with sinews, flesh, and skin—but they are still lifeless. It is only when the ruach enters them that they live. The physical body, fully assembled, is dead without the spirit. The spirit is a second, distinct ingredient that must be added from outside. As Cooper observes, this passage powerfully depicts humanity as constituted from “two different and mutually irreducible sources”—dust and spirit—and this picture “does not look as though it could be philosophically elaborated into monism.”19 Fudge did not discuss Ezekiel 37 in the context of anthropology. (Treated in Chapter 7.)
The Psalms and the prophets describe the soul as having its own distinct experiences—desires, longings, sorrows, and spiritual appetites—that are sometimes distinguished from the experiences of the body. This is exactly what we would expect if the soul is a real, immaterial part of the person with its own capacities.
10. Psalm 6:3 — “My soul also is greatly troubled.” David describes trouble that belongs specifically to his nephesh—not to his body, not to his circumstances in general, but to his soul. (Treated in Chapter 8.)20
11. Psalm 31:9 — “My eye wastes away with grief, yes, my soul and my body!” Here the Psalmist distinguishes soul and body as both suffering. If the soul and the body were the same thing—if “soul” were just another word for the whole person—this distinction would be meaningless. But the Psalmist lists them separately because they are separate, even though they suffer together. (Treated in Chapter 8.)21
12. Psalm 42:1–2 — “As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for You, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” The soul’s thirst is spiritual, not physical. The body does not thirst for God—it thirsts for water. The soul thirsts for the presence of the living God. This is an interior experience that belongs to the immaterial dimension of the person. (Treated in Chapter 8.)22
13. Psalm 44:25 — “For our soul is bowed down to the dust; our body clings to the ground.” Once again, the soul and the body are distinguished. The soul is bowed down; the body clings. Two different facets of the person described in parallel, each with its own experience. (Treated in Chapter 8.)23
14. Psalm 63:1 — “O God, You are my God; early will I seek You; my soul thirsts for You; my flesh longs for You in a dry and thirsty land where there is no water.” The soul thirsts; the flesh longs. David uses two different Hebrew terms for two different dimensions of his person—nephesh for the soul and basar for the flesh—and attributes distinct experiences to each. (Treated in Chapter 8.)24
15. Isaiah 26:9 — “With my soul I have desired You in the night, yes, by my spirit within me I will seek You early.” The prophet attributes desire to his soul and seeking to his spirit. Both are interior faculties. Both are distinguished from the body. Both express a longing for God that is not reducible to physical sensation. (Treated in Chapter 8.)25
Fudge ignored every single one of these six passages. Not one of them appears in The Fire That Consumes.
16. Isaiah 10:18 — “And it will consume the glory of his forest and of his fruitful field, both soul and body; and they will be as when a sick man wastes away.” This verse describes destruction that affects both soul (nephesh) and body (basar). The pairing of soul and body as distinct objects of destruction anticipates Jesus’ warning in Matthew 10:28. If the soul and the body are not distinct, why does the prophet mention them separately? (Treated in Chapter 9.)26
17. Daniel 7:15 — “I, Daniel, was grieved in my spirit within my body, and the visions of my head troubled me.” Daniel locates his spirit within his body. The spirit is inside the body—contained by it, but not identical to it. This spatial language is precisely what substance dualism would predict: the soul or spirit inhabits the body as a distinct entity. (Treated in Chapter 9.)27
18. Luke 12:19–20 — “And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul will be required of you.’” The rich man addresses his psyche (soul) as something that can be spoken to, reassured, and then demanded back by God. God requires the soul. The language implies that the soul is something God gave and can reclaim—not just a function of the body that ceases when the body stops working. (Treated in Chapter 9.)28
Insight: The first eighteen ignored passages span the Old Testament from Genesis to Daniel. They describe the soul departing at death, returning at resurrection, thirsting for God, being located within the body, and being required by God. Taken together, they present a portrait of the human soul that simply cannot be reduced to “the whole person” or “a life-force.” And Fudge addressed none of them.
If we want to know what Jesus believed about human nature, we should listen to what He said about His own soul and spirit. The Gospels record several moments in which Jesus attributes experiences to His soul that are distinct from what His body is experiencing. Fudge discussed Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 10:28 (where He warns about the one who can destroy both soul and body in hell), but he ignored the passages in which Jesus speaks of His own inner life.
19. Matthew 26:38 — “Then He said to them, ‘My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death.’” In Gethsemane, Jesus does not say “I am sad.” He says “my psyche”—my soul—“is exceedingly sorrowful.” He locates His anguish in a specific dimension of His person: His soul. This is not a throwaway expression. It is a deliberate self-description in a moment of extreme crisis. (Treated in Chapter 11.)29
20. Matthew 26:41 — “Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” Jesus draws a contrast between the pneuma (spirit) and the sarx (flesh). The spirit wills one thing; the flesh inclines toward another. This is not just ethical language. It is anthropological language. Jesus identifies two dimensions of the human person that can pull in different directions. (Treated in Chapter 11.)30
21. John 12:27 — “Now My soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save Me from this hour’?” Once again, Jesus attributes an experience—trouble, disturbance, anguish—to His soul. His body was not in physical pain at this point. His soul was troubled by the coming cross. This is an experience of the immaterial self. (Treated in Chapter 11.)31
22. Luke 1:46–47 — “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.” These are Mary’s words, but they stand in the tradition of Jesus’ own teaching and reflect the anthropology of the Gospels. Mary distinguishes her soul and her spirit—both immaterial faculties—and attributes different activities to each: magnifying and rejoicing. (Treated in Chapter 11.)32
Fudge addressed none of these four passages. He discussed what Jesus taught about the soul’s destruction. He did not discuss what Jesus said about His own soul’s experience. And that is a remarkable omission. If we want to build an anthropology from the teachings of Jesus, we need to listen not only to what He taught about the soul but to what He said about His own soul. In Gethsemane, He was not giving a theology lecture. He was crying out from the depths of His immaterial self. His soul was sorrowful. His spirit was willing even as His flesh was weak. These are not throwaway expressions. They are the Son of God’s own testimony to the reality of the immaterial dimension of His person. A physicalist might say, “He was just using common idioms.” But if the Son of God consistently uses idioms that presuppose dualism, perhaps that is because dualism is true.
The New Testament carries forward the Old Testament pattern: at death, the spirit or soul departs the body. At resurrection, it returns. These narratives are the most straightforward evidence for dualism in the entire Bible, and Fudge left several of the most important ones unaddressed.
23. Matthew 27:50 — “And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit.” The verb aphiemi (yielded up, released) implies a deliberate act of letting go. Jesus’ spirit left His body. This is departure language—the same kind of language we saw in Genesis 35:18 and 1 Kings 17:21–22. Fudge discussed Luke 23:46 and John 19:30, where similar departure language is used, but he did not discuss the parallel in Matthew. (Treated in Chapter 12.)33
24. Luke 8:55 — “Then her spirit returned, and she arose immediately.” This is the account of Jairus’s daughter. She was dead. Jesus spoke to her. Her pneuma (spirit) returned to her body. And she got up. The language mirrors 1 Kings 17:21–22 almost exactly. The spirit leaves at death; the spirit returns at resurrection. This is dualism in narrative form—New Testament edition. Fudge ignored it. (Treated in Chapter 12.)34
25. 2 Timothy 4:6 — “For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure is at hand.” Paul uses the word analusis (departure, loosing, dissolution) to describe his impending death. The language of departure—of something being loosed from something else—implies a separation. Paul expects to depart from his body, not simply cease to exist. This fits seamlessly with his language in 2 Corinthians 5:8 and Philippians 1:23. Fudge never addressed it. (Treated in Chapter 12.)35
These passages are among the most theologically significant in the entire body-soul debate. They teach that between death and the final resurrection, persons exist consciously—either with the Lord or in a state of waiting. If these passages are taken at face value, physicalism cannot be true, because the person continues to exist after the body has died. Fudge discussed some intermediate-state passages (notably Luke 16:19–31 and Philippians 1:21–24), but he left several of the most important ones completely unaddressed.
26. Luke 23:43 — “And Jesus said to him, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.’” Jesus promised the thief on the cross that he would be with Him in Paradise that day—not at some future resurrection, but immediately upon death. This is a direct affirmation of conscious existence between death and resurrection. Fudge did not discuss it in his anthropological sections. (Treated in Chapter 13.)36
27. 2 Corinthians 5:1–8 — “We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.” Paul explicitly envisions a state in which a person is absent from the body and present with the Lord. This is not resurrection language—Paul is describing what happens at death, before the resurrection body is received. He speaks of the earthly body as a tent that is dissolved (v. 1), of being “unclothed” (v. 4), and of being at home with the Lord apart from the body (v. 8). As Cooper argues in his extended treatment, this passage is devastating to physicalism.37 Fudge did not engage it. (Treated in Chapter 13.)
28. Hebrews 12:23 — “To the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect.” The author of Hebrews describes believers who have died as “spirits” (pneumata) who have been made perfect. They exist. They are in heaven. They are described as spirits—not as bodies, not as “whole persons,” but as spirits. This is precisely the language we would expect if the soul or spirit survives bodily death. Fudge did not discuss this verse. (Treated in Chapter 13.)38
The absence of Hebrews 12:23 from Fudge’s discussion is particularly telling. This passage does not use soul-language in a metaphorical or ambiguous way. It uses the word pneumata—spirits—to describe deceased believers who are currently in heaven. They are not bodies. They are not “whole persons” in any physicalist sense. They are spirits. Made perfect. In the presence of God. If you are building an anthropology that denies the existence of disembodied spirits, you need to reckon with this verse. Fudge did not.
29. 1 Peter 3:18–20 — “Being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit, by whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison.” Christ preached to disembodied spirits—persons who are described as conscious and as “in prison” in the intermediate state. This passage presupposes that the dead exist as spirits and can be addressed. Fudge never discussed it in his anthropological treatment. (Treated in Chapter 14.)39
30. 1 Peter 4:6 — “For this reason the gospel was preached also to those who are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.” The gospel was preached to the dead. The dead can receive a message. They can respond. This implies conscious existence after death—and it implies that the person who exists after death exists “in the spirit,” which is exactly what dualism predicts. Fudge did not address this passage. (Treated in Chapter 14.)40
31. 2 Peter 1:13–14 — “Yes, I think it is right, as long as I am in this tent, to stir you up by reminding you, knowing that shortly I must put off my tent, just as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me.” Peter describes his body as a “tent” (skenoma) that he will “put off” at death. A tent is a temporary dwelling for something that lives inside it. When you take off a tent, the person who was inside continues to exist. This is body-as-dwelling language—the same conceptual framework as 2 Corinthians 5:1–4—and it directly implies substance dualism. Fudge ignored it. (Treated in Chapter 14.)41
Paul’s letters contain some of the most explicit body-soul and body-spirit distinctions in the entire Bible. Fudge discussed a few of these (notably 1 Thessalonians 5:23 and Hebrews 4:12), but he left the heart of Paul’s anthropological framework untouched.
32. Romans 8:10 — “And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.” Paul contrasts the body (dead because of sin) with the spirit (alive because of righteousness). The body and the spirit are in different conditions at the same time. This only makes sense if they are distinct realities. (Treated in Chapter 15.)42
33. Romans 8:16 — “The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” The Holy Spirit testifies to our spirit—the human spirit, the immaterial dimension of the person. Paul does not say the Holy Spirit testifies to our brain or to our body. He speaks of spirit-to-spirit communication, which presupposes that the human spirit is real. (Treated in Chapter 15.)43
34. 1 Corinthians 5:3–5 — “For I indeed, as absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged (as though I were present) him who has so done this deed.” Paul describes himself as absent in body but present in spirit. His spirit is “with” the Corinthians even though his body is in a different city. This is not metaphorical in the way a physicalist would need it to be. Paul actually exercises apostolic authority “in spirit” from a distance. (Treated in Chapter 15.)44
35. James 2:26 — “For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.” James uses the body-spirit relationship as an analogy for faith and works. But the analogy only works if the premise is true: the body without the spirit really is dead. The spirit is what gives the body life. Remove the spirit and the body is a corpse. This is a succinct statement of substance dualism embedded in an ethical argument—and Fudge never engaged it. (Treated in Chapter 15.)45
Key Argument: James 2:26 may be the single most compact statement of substance dualism in the entire New Testament. The body without the spirit is dead. The spirit is what makes the body alive. This is not a metaphor. It is an anthropological claim used as the basis for an ethical analogy. If James did not believe the spirit was real and separable from the body, his analogy collapses. And Fudge never addressed it.
The epistles are rich with language that distinguishes the inner person from the outer person, the spirit from the flesh, and the body from whatever inhabits it. These passages use some of the most vivid anthropological imagery in the New Testament: the body as a temple housing the Spirit, the body as a tent that will be put off, the outward man perishing while the inward man is renewed. This imagery is not incidental to Paul’s theology. It runs through his letters like a thread, shaping how he thinks about sanctification, suffering, death, and hope. A physicalist must argue that all of this language is purely metaphorical—that Paul does not actually believe in an “inner man” that is distinct from the body. But the consistency and intensity of the language makes that a difficult case to sustain. Fudge left all six of these passages unaddressed.
36. 2 Corinthians 4:16 — “Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day.” Paul draws a stark contrast. The outward man—the body—is decaying. The inward man—the soul or spirit—is being renewed. They move in opposite directions. If the “inward man” is just another name for the physical brain, then the inward man should be perishing alongside the outward man. But Paul says the opposite. (Treated in Chapter 16.)46
37. 1 Corinthians 6:19–20 — “Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you?” A temple is a structure that houses a presence. The body houses the Holy Spirit. But the imagery implies a distinction between the structure (the body) and what dwells within it (the Spirit—and, by extension, the human spirit with which the Holy Spirit communicates, per Romans 8:16). This is indwelling language, and it presupposes a distinction between the dwelling and the dweller. (Treated in Chapter 16.)47
38. 2 Corinthians 7:1 — “Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” Paul distinguishes the filthiness of the flesh from the filthiness of the spirit. Both need cleansing. But they are distinct dimensions of the person—the physical and the immaterial—each capable of being polluted in its own way. (Treated in Chapter 16.)48
39. Ephesians 3:16 — “That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man.” Paul prays that the Ephesians would be strengthened in the inner man by the Holy Spirit. The inner man is the target of God’s empowering work. This language is virtually impossible to reconcile with physicalism, which has no inner man—only a brain embedded in a body. (Treated in Chapter 16.)49
40. 1 Corinthians 7:34 — “The unmarried woman cares about the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit.” Holiness is to be pursued in both body and spirit. These are named as distinct arenas of the moral life. If the spirit is just the body under another name, the distinction adds nothing. (Treated in Chapter 16.)50
41. Colossians 2:5 — “For though I am absent in the flesh, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the steadfastness of your faith in Christ.” Like 1 Corinthians 5:3–5, Paul claims to be present with a distant community “in spirit.” His flesh is in one place; his spirit reaches to another. (Treated in Chapter 16.)51
42. 1 Peter 2:11 — “Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul.” Peter describes a battle between fleshly lusts and the soul. The flesh and the soul are opponents. They pull in different directions. This warfare language requires two distinct combatants. If the soul is just another name for the body, then the flesh is at war with itself—which is incoherent. (Treated in Chapter 17.)52
43. 2 Timothy 4:22 — “The Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Grace be with you.” Paul’s benediction addresses Timothy’s spirit specifically. Not his body. Not his whole person generically. His spirit. This is the immaterial dimension of Timothy’s being that Paul commits to the Lord’s care. (Treated in Chapter 17.)53
44. Philippians 1:27 — “Only let your conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of your affairs, that you stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel.” Paul distinguishes spirit (pneuma) and mind (psyche) as the arenas of unified Christian action. Both are immaterial. Both are distinct from the body. (Treated in Chapter 17.)54
45. 1 John 3:20 — “For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things.” The heart (kardia) in biblical usage is not the physical organ but the center of the moral and spiritual self. John describes the heart as having the capacity to condemn—a judicial, moral function—and God as having access to its depths. This language presupposes an interior self that is more than a neural network. (Treated in Chapter 17.)55
46. Luke 24:39 — “Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself. Handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.” The risen Jesus distinguishes Himself from a spirit. A spirit, He says, does not have flesh and bones. He has flesh and bones. Therefore He is not merely a spirit. The logic presupposes that spirits are real—real enough that the disciples might have confused the risen Jesus with one. Jesus does not say “spirits do not exist.” He says a spirit does not have flesh and bones. He affirms the category of spirit while distinguishing it from His resurrected body. (Treated in Chapter 18.)56
47. John 3:6 — “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” Jesus draws an ontological distinction between flesh and spirit as two different kinds of being. What comes from the flesh is flesh. What comes from the Spirit is spirit. These are not two words for the same thing. They are two categories of reality. (Treated in Chapter 18.)57
48. 1 John 3:2 — “Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” John describes a transformation that awaits believers—a future state in which we will be like Christ. This transformation presupposes continuity of personal identity between the present self and the glorified self. On dualism, the soul provides that continuity. On physicalism, there is no obvious bridge between the present body (which will decompose) and the resurrection body (which will be new). (Treated in Chapter 18.)58
Step back with me and look at what we have just surveyed. Forty-eight passages. Spread across the Old Testament and the New. Written by Moses, David, Solomon, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Zechariah, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter, James, and the author of Hebrews. Spanning a thousand years of biblical revelation. And every single one of them bears directly on the question of human nature—on whether the human being is a body-soul unity or merely a body.
Fudge did not address any of them.
I want you to sit with that number for a moment. Forty-eight. That is not a handful of obscure proof texts. That is a vast body of biblical testimony. It includes passages from the Pentateuch, the historical books, the Psalms, the prophets, the Gospels, the book of Acts, the Pauline epistles, the general epistles, and Revelation. It includes narrative texts, poetic texts, didactic texts, and apocalyptic texts. It includes the words of Moses, David, Isaiah, Daniel, Jesus, Paul, Peter, James, John, and the author of Hebrews. If we are trying to understand what the Bible teaches about human nature, these forty-eight passages are not optional extras. They are the heart of the evidence.
That is not a small oversight. When you are building an anthropological case from Scripture, the evidence you leave out is just as revealing as the evidence you include. And the evidence Fudge left out forms a remarkably coherent picture. These forty-eight passages, taken together, present a vision of human nature in which the soul is real, the spirit is distinct from the body, the inner man and the outer man are different dimensions of the person, the soul departs at death, the spirit can exist apart from the body, and the person continues to be conscious between death and resurrection.
That is substance dualism. Not Platonic dualism. Not a denial of the body’s goodness. Not an escape from creation. Just the straightforward testimony of Scripture that we are more than dust. We are body and soul.
Cooper puts the point decisively. After surveying the Hebrew anthropological terms and finding that they do not by themselves settle the debate, he turns to the narratives about the dead and concludes: “The final result of our inquiry into Old Testament anthropology yields both functional holism and dualism.” The Hebrews were holistic, yes—they saw the human being as an integrated unity. But they also believed that something of the person survives death. And that combination—holism plus survival—is exactly what Cooper calls “holistic dualism.”59
Cooper is careful to distinguish functional holism from ontological holism. Functional holism says that all of a person’s capacities are interrelated and integrated—the body, mind, emotions, and will work together as a unified whole. That is clearly what the Old Testament teaches. But ontological holism goes further: it claims that if the whole is broken up, none of the parts can continue to exist. That is what physicalism requires. And the Old Testament narratives about the dead contradict it. The dead continue to exist in Sheol. Something of the person survives. Therefore ontological holism is false. Therefore physicalism is false.60
Fudge never reckoned with this argument because he never reckoned with the evidence on which it is built. He engaged the vocabulary. He did not engage the narratives. He discussed what nephesh and ruach mean as words. He did not discuss what happens when Rachel’s nephesh leaves her body, or when the child’s nephesh returns at Elijah’s prayer, or when Jesus promises the thief that he will be in Paradise today, or when Paul says he would rather be absent from the body and present with the Lord.
And that is the deepest problem with Fudge’s anthropology. He answered the wrong question. He asked: “Do the Hebrew words nephesh and ruach mean ‘immaterial soul’?” And his answer was: “No—they have a wide range of meanings, and none of them clearly points to an immaterial subsistent self.”61 Fair enough, as far as vocabulary goes. But the right question is: “What does the Bible as a whole teach about what happens to the person at death?” And the answer to that question—drawn from the forty-eight passages Fudge ignored and the twenty-two he discussed but read through physicalist lenses—is that the person survives. The soul departs. The spirit continues. And that is dualism.
I can hear several objections forming. Let me address them honestly.
This is the most natural response, and it has some force. Fudge’s primary topic was the fate of the wicked, not the constitution of the human person. But here is the problem: Fudge did write about anthropology. He devoted significant space to it. He built a specific anthropological framework—a physicalist one—and then used that framework as a foundation for his eschatological conclusions. If he had simply said, “The question of the soul is interesting but beyond the scope of this book,” I would have no complaint. But he did not say that. He made anthropological claims, cited anthropological scholars, and drew anthropological conclusions. Once you enter that arena, you have an obligation to engage the evidence. And he did not.62
Common Objection: “No scholar can address every passage. You’re holding Fudge to an impossible standard.” Response: I am not asking Fudge to exegete seventy-four passages in a book about final punishment. I am pointing out that when he chose to build an anthropological framework, he did so by engaging only one-third of the relevant evidence—and it was the third that was most favorable to his position. The other two-thirds—the passages most naturally read as supporting dualism—were left on the table. That is not an impossible standard. It is a basic requirement of honest scholarship.
A physicalist might argue that when the Bible says Rachel’s soul “departed,” it is using a figure of speech for dying. When Jesus says His soul is “exceedingly sorrowful,” He is using the word psyche as a synonym for “I.” When Paul says he would rather be “absent from the body,” he is speaking of an ideal state that does not actually involve disembodied existence.
These readings are possible in isolation. Any single passage can be reinterpreted to avoid dualist conclusions if you work hard enough at it. But the cumulative weight of forty-eight passages all pointing in the same direction is not so easily dismissed. At some point, the pattern becomes the evidence. When one passage describes the soul departing at death, you might call it a metaphor. When two or three passages do it, you start to wonder. When dozens of passages across both Testaments, written by many different authors over many centuries, all use language that most naturally assumes the soul is a real, separable entity—at some point, the simplest and most faithful explanation is that the biblical authors actually believed these things. The burden of proof falls on the physicalist to explain why the entire Bible speaks as though dualism is true if it is not.63
Cooper makes this argument powerfully. He acknowledges that the Hebrew vocabulary does not, by itself, prove dualism. But he insists that the narratives about the dead do. And it is not just one narrative or two. It is a consistent pattern across both Testaments, across multiple authors, across a thousand years of revelation. “At the same time,” Cooper writes, “they believed that human persons continue to exist after death, though in a state far less desirable than earthly life.” He concludes: “This view is unquestionably dualistic and yet it is fully compatible with Hebrew holism.”64
This is a common concern, and I understand it. If the soul can exist without the body, some worry, then the body becomes dispensable—and the resurrection becomes optional. Why bother with a resurrection if the soul is already with the Lord?
The answer is that substance dualism does not devalue the body. It affirms both the body’s goodness and the soul’s reality. The human being is not complete without both. That is why the resurrection is not optional—it is essential. The intermediate state, in which the soul exists apart from the body, is a real state but an incomplete state. Cooper calls this “holistic dualism”—the view that humans are body-soul unities designed for embodied existence, but that the soul can survive the dissolution of the body by God’s sustaining power, and that the resurrection is the restoration of the full person: body and soul reunited.65
Far from undermining the resurrection, substance dualism actually strengthens it. On physicalism, the person who died and the person who is resurrected may not be the same person. If the body is destroyed and God creates a new body from scratch, what makes the new person identical to the old one? This is the notorious “gap problem” in physicalist eschatology.66 On substance dualism, the soul provides the thread of personal identity. The same soul that lived in the mortal body is reunited with the resurrection body. There is no gap. The same you who died is the same you who rises.
I agree—in part. Fudge’s case for conditional immortality does still stand. I have said repeatedly throughout this book that CI does not depend on physicalism. The biblical evidence for final destruction is strong regardless of what you believe about the soul. Matthew 10:28 actually works better on dualism—God destroys both soul and body in Gehenna—than it does on physicalism. So I am not attacking CI. I am strengthening it by giving it a better anthropological foundation.67
But the anthropological question is not a “side issue.” It matters enormously. It affects what we believe about the intermediate state (are our deceased loved ones conscious with the Lord, or do they simply not exist?). It affects personal identity at the resurrection (is the risen person really the same person who died?). It affects the postmortem opportunity (can God offer salvation to those who never heard the gospel?). And it affects the pastoral ministry of the church (what do we say at funerals?).68
The forty-eight passages Fudge ignored are not marginal texts. They include some of the most pastorally powerful, theologically rich, and exegetically significant passages in the entire Bible. Genesis 35:18 and 1 Kings 17:21–22 give us the Old Testament foundation for understanding death as the separation of soul and body. Luke 23:43 and 2 Corinthians 5:1–8 give us the New Testament assurance that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. James 2:26 gives us a succinct anthropological axiom: the body without the spirit is dead. And Hebrews 12:23 gives us a glimpse of the heavenly assembly: the spirits of just men made perfect, awaiting the resurrection.
These are not side issues. These are the passages that shape the Christian understanding of death, hope, and the life to come. And Fudge left every one of them out of his anthropological framework.
I want to close this chapter where I began—with gratitude. Edward Fudge changed the conversation about final punishment. He made conditional immortality a credible option for evangelical Christians. His scholarship was serious, his writing was clear, and his love for Scripture was evident on every page. I owe him a great deal. And I believe that the CI movement owes him a debt that can never fully be repaid. He stood up for a reading of Scripture that had been marginalized for centuries, and he did so with courage and integrity.
But on the question of human nature—on the question of what we are—his treatment was incomplete. Not wrong about everything. Not dishonest. Not careless in the ordinary sense. But incomplete in a way that distorted the picture. By building his anthropology on a selective sample of the biblical evidence—a sample that excluded forty-eight passages bearing directly on the body-soul question—Fudge arrived at conclusions that do not reflect the full witness of Scripture. He answered the vocabulary question well: What do nephesh and ruach mean as Hebrew words? But he did not answer the narrative question at all: What does the Bible show us happening to people at death?69
The forty-eight passages tell a different story than the one Fudge told. They tell the story of a soul that departs at death and can return at resurrection. Of a spirit that is formed by God within the body but is not identical to the body. Of an inner man being renewed while the outer man decays. Of conscious existence between death and resurrection. Of fleshly lusts warring against the soul. Of bodies that serve as temples and tents for the spirit that dwells within.
They tell the story of a human being who is more than dust.
In the next chapter, we will step back and examine how physicalist assumptions function as a hermeneutical lens—how they shape the way Fudge and other CI physicalists read Scripture on questions of human nature. We will see that the problem is not just missing passages. It is a way of reading the Bible that systematically filters out evidence for the soul.70
↑ 1. Edward William Fudge, The Fire That Consumes: A Biblical and Historical Study of the Doctrine of Final Punishment, 3rd ed. (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2011). Throughout this chapter, all page references to Fudge are drawn from the embedded page numbers in the project files edition of this work.
↑ 2. See the detailed treatment of Fudge’s redefinition of these terms in Chapter 19 of this volume. For the holistic monist scholars Fudge relies upon, see Hans Walter Wolff, Anthropology of the Old Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974); Aimo T. Nikolainen, cited in Fudge, The Fire That Consumes, pp. 26–27.
↑ 3. This count of approximately forty-eight passages is based on a systematic comparison of all body-soul passages identified in Chapters 5–18 of this book with the contents of Fudge’s The Fire That Consumes. For the complete catalogue of passages Fudge discussed, listed, and ignored, see Appendix D.
↑ 4. Fudge, The Fire That Consumes, pp. 25–30.
↑ 5. Nikolainen, as quoted in Fudge, The Fire That Consumes, pp. 26–27.
↑ 6. On how presuppositions function as a hermeneutical lens, see Chapter 23 of this volume.
↑ 7. James 2:26 (NKJV). For the significance of this verse in the body-soul debate, see the treatment in Chapter 15.
↑ 8. See Chapters 20 and 21 for the passages Fudge discussed and those he listed without exegesis, respectively. The breakdown is approximately twenty-two discussed, four listed without exegesis, and forty-eight completely ignored. See also Appendix D.
↑ 9. John W. Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), chap. 3, “Old Testament Anthropology: The Dualistic Implication.”
↑ 10. Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting, chap. 3, “Philosophical Reflection: Holistic Dualism.”
↑ 11. Job 32:8 (NKJV). For detailed exegesis, see Chapter 5 of this volume.
↑ 12. Psalm 139:14 (NKJV). Treated in detail in Chapter 5.
↑ 13. Proverbs 20:27 (NKJV). On the relationship between neshama and ruach, see Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting, chap. 2. Treated in detail in Chapter 5.
↑ 14. Zechariah 12:1 (NKJV). On creationism regarding the soul, see J. P. Moreland, The Soul: How We Know It’s Real and Why It Matters (Chicago: Moody, 2014), chap. 4. Treated in detail in Chapter 5.
↑ 15. Isaiah 31:3 (NKJV). Treated in detail in Chapter 5.
↑ 16. Genesis 35:18 (NKJV). Cooper discusses this passage in Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting, chap. 3. See also the exegesis in Chapter 6 of this volume.
↑ 17. 1 Samuel 28:8–15. On the theological significance of this passage for the intermediate state, see Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting, chap. 3. Treated in Chapter 6.
↑ 18. 1 Kings 17:21–22 (NKJV). Treated in Chapter 6.
↑ 19. Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting, chap. 2, “The Old Testament and Philosophical Anthropology.”
↑ 20. Psalm 6:3 (NKJV). Treated in Chapter 8.
↑ 21. Psalm 31:9 (NKJV). Treated in Chapter 8.
↑ 22. Psalm 42:1–2 (NKJV). Treated in Chapter 8.
↑ 23. Psalm 44:25 (NKJV). Treated in Chapter 8.
↑ 24. Psalm 63:1 (NKJV). Treated in Chapter 8.
↑ 25. Isaiah 26:9 (NKJV). Treated in Chapter 8.
↑ 26. Isaiah 10:18 (NKJV). See Chapter 9 for detailed exegesis.
↑ 27. Daniel 7:15 (NKJV). See Chapter 9 for detailed exegesis.
↑ 28. Luke 12:19–20 (NKJV). See Chapter 9 for detailed exegesis.
↑ 29. Matthew 26:38 (NKJV). Treated in Chapter 11.
↑ 30. Matthew 26:41 (NKJV). See Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting, chap. 5. Treated in Chapter 11.
↑ 31. John 12:27 (NKJV). Treated in Chapter 11.
↑ 32. Luke 1:46–47 (NKJV). Though these are Mary’s words, they reflect the broader Lukan anthropology. Treated in Chapter 11.
↑ 33. Matthew 27:50 (NKJV). On the significance of aphēken to pneuma (“yielded up the spirit”), see Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting, chap. 5. Treated in Chapter 12.
↑ 34. Luke 8:55 (NKJV). Treated in Chapter 12.
↑ 35. 2 Timothy 4:6 (NKJV). On analusis as departure language, see the discussion in Chapter 12.
↑ 36. Luke 23:43 (NKJV). For a detailed treatment of this passage and its implications for the intermediate state, see Chapter 13.
↑ 37. 2 Corinthians 5:1–8 (NKJV). See Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting, chaps. 5–7; and Cooper, “Absent from the Body … Present with the Lord: Is the Intermediate State Fatal to Physicalism?” in R. Keith Loftin and Joshua R. Farris, eds., Christian Physicalism? Philosophical Theological Criticisms (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018), chap. 16. See the detailed treatment in Chapter 13 of this volume.
↑ 38. Hebrews 12:23 (NKJV). Treated in Chapter 13.
↑ 39. 1 Peter 3:18–20 (NKJV). Treated in Chapter 14. See also the discussion of the postmortem opportunity in Chapter 29.
↑ 40. 1 Peter 4:6 (NKJV). Treated in Chapter 14.
↑ 41. 2 Peter 1:13–14 (NKJV). On tent/tabernacle imagery as implying substance dualism, see Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting, chap. 6. Treated in Chapter 14.
↑ 42. Romans 8:10 (NKJV). Treated in Chapter 15.
↑ 43. Romans 8:16 (NKJV). Treated in Chapter 15.
↑ 44. 1 Corinthians 5:3–5 (NKJV). Treated in Chapter 15.
↑ 45. James 2:26 (NKJV). Treated in Chapter 15. See also Moreland, The Soul, chap. 5, for philosophical comment on this verse.
↑ 46. 2 Corinthians 4:16 (NKJV). See Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting, chap. 6. Treated in Chapter 16.
↑ 47. 1 Corinthians 6:19–20 (NKJV). Treated in Chapter 16.
↑ 48. 2 Corinthians 7:1 (NKJV). Treated in Chapter 16.
↑ 49. Ephesians 3:16 (NKJV). Treated in Chapter 16.
↑ 50. 1 Corinthians 7:34 (NKJV). Treated in Chapter 16.
↑ 51. Colossians 2:5 (NKJV). Treated in Chapter 16.
↑ 52. 1 Peter 2:11 (NKJV). Treated in Chapter 17.
↑ 53. 2 Timothy 4:22 (NKJV). Treated in Chapter 17.
↑ 54. Philippians 1:27 (NKJV). Treated in Chapter 17.
↑ 55. 1 John 3:20 (NKJV). On the biblical concept of the “heart” as the center of the moral and spiritual self, see Wolff, Anthropology of the Old Testament, chap. 5, “leb(ab) — Reasonable Man.” Treated in Chapter 17.
↑ 56. Luke 24:39 (NKJV). Treated in Chapter 18. Note that Jesus’ statement affirms both the reality of spirits and the distinctness of His resurrected body from a disembodied spirit.
↑ 57. John 3:6 (NKJV). Treated in Chapter 18.
↑ 58. 1 John 3:2 (NKJV). Treated in Chapter 18. On the personal identity problem in physicalist eschatology, see Chapter 25.
↑ 59. Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting, chap. 3, “Philosophical Reflection: Holistic Dualism.” Cooper writes: “The final result of our inquiry into Old Testament anthropology yields both functional holism and dualism.”
↑ 60. Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting, chap. 2, “Preliminary Results for the Holism-Dualism Debate.” Cooper distinguishes functional holism (which affirms the unity of the person’s capacities) from ontological holism (which claims that no part of the person can survive the dissolution of the whole). He argues that the Old Testament affirms the former while the narratives about the dead contradict the latter.
↑ 61. Cooper himself concedes this point about the vocabulary: “There are no texts in which soul or spirit or person must be interpreted as an immaterial substance which functions independent of the body.” Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting, chap. 2. But Cooper insists that the narratives about the dead go beyond the vocabulary to imply dualism. That is the critical distinction Fudge missed.
↑ 62. Fudge, The Fire That Consumes, pp. 25–30. These pages constitute Fudge’s most concentrated treatment of human nature and anthropological terms.
↑ 63. On the cumulative case method applied to the body-soul question, see Chapter 31 of this volume.
↑ 64. Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting, chap. 3, “Philosophical Reflection: Holistic Dualism.”
↑ 65. Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting, chap. 3, “Holistic Dualism: Philosophical Implication of Old Testament Anthropology.” See also Brandon Rickabaugh and J. P. Moreland, The Substance of Consciousness: A Comprehensive Defense of Contemporary Substance Dualism (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2023), chap. 1.
↑ 66. On the “gap problem” in physicalist eschatology, see Cooper, “Absent from the Body … Present with the Lord,” in Christian Physicalism?, chap. 16; see also Chapter 25 of this volume.
↑ 67. See Chapter 27, “Does CI Require Physicalism? Absolutely Not,” for the detailed argument.
↑ 68. On the pastoral implications of the body-soul question, see the pastoral sections in Chapters 5–18 and the extended treatment in Chapter 29 (postmortem opportunity).
↑ 69. This is not a charge of scholarly malpractice. Every scholar works within constraints of space, time, and their own presuppositions. But the scope of what was left out demands acknowledgment and correction. That is the purpose of this chapter and of this book.
↑ 70. See Chapter 23, “The Physicalist Lens: How Assumptions Shape Interpretation.”