Appendix E
This bibliography gathers the works that have shaped the argument of this book. Entries are grouped by category so readers who want to dig deeper into a particular question can find a starting point quickly. Each entry includes a short annotation describing the work's relevance and my honest assessment of its strengths and weaknesses. Some of these books I lean on heavily; others I disagree with strongly. In every case I have tried to engage charitably.
Six categories follow: (1) Christology and the Incarnation; (2) Substance Dualism and Philosophy of Mind; (3) Physicalism and Christian Materialism; (4) Patristic and Historical Theology; (5) Near-Death Experience Research; and (6) Conditional Immortality. Within each category, entries appear alphabetically by author.1
How to use this bibliography. If you have time for only a handful of books, start with the ones I have marked as core conversation partners: Loke's Kryptic Model, Pawl's In Defense of Conciliar Christology, Cooper's Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting, Wilkinson's Crowned with Glory and Honor, and the Loftin-Farris volume Christian Physicalism?. Together these five works cover the heart of the argument from multiple angles.
Works on the person of Christ, the hypostatic union, and the various models of the Incarnation that the book engages.
Crisp, Oliver D. Divinity and Humanity: The Incarnation Reconsidered. Current Issues in Theology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. — A clear, analytic-friendly treatment of perichoresis, the concrete-versus-abstract nature debate, anhypostasia and enhypostasia, and the choice between fallen and unfallen human natures for Christ. Crisp defends a broadly Chalcedonian position with admirable precision. His chapter on kenosis and krypsis is useful background for Loke.
Davis, Stephen T. Christian Philosophical Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. — A wide-ranging set of essays, several of which bear directly on the Incarnation and personal identity through death. Davis is sympathetic to dualism and engages the kenotic and two-minds models thoughtfully. His treatment of resurrection identity is helpful, though his openness to a soft kenoticism is one place where I part ways.
Farris, Joshua R. An Introduction to Theological Anthropology: Humans, Both Creaturely and Divine. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2020. — Although primarily a work of theological anthropology, Farris devotes substantial attention to the Christological implications of the major positions on human nature. He is sympathetic to substance dualism and shows clearly why anthropology and Christology cannot be separated. The survey chapters are an excellent on-ramp for readers new to the field.
Le Poidevin, Robin. "Kenosis, Necessity, and the Limits of Christology." In The Metaphysics of the Incarnation, edited by Anna Marmodoro and Jonathan Hill. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. — A philosophically careful exploration of how necessity and contingency function in claims about the divine nature. Le Poidevin presses real difficulties for kenotic models. Even where I disagree with his constructive proposals, his analysis of what kenoticism actually commits one to is clarifying.
Leftow, Brian. "A Timeless God Incarnate." In The Incarnation, edited by Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O'Collins, 273–99. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. — Leftow's compositional approach to the Incarnation is one of the more sophisticated contemporary models. I do not finally adopt his framework, but his treatment of how the Son relates to the assumed human nature deserves close reading.
Loke, Andrew Ter Ern. A Kryptic Model of the Incarnation. Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology, and Biblical Studies. London: Routledge, 2014. — The single most important source for the Christological model defended in this book. Loke develops a "Divine Preconscious Model" on which Christ's divine attributes (omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence) are concealed (Greek krypsis) at a preconscious level rather than surrendered. This preserves both the genuine humanity of Jesus' earthly experience and the full deity of the Son.
———. The Origin of Divine Christology. Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. — A historically rigorous case that the highest Christology — Jesus as fully divine — was already in place at the earliest stratum of the Christian movement, not a later development. The argument is indispensable for grounding the divine half of the hypostatic union in Scripture.
McCall, Thomas H. Which Trinity? Whose Monotheism? Philosophical and Systematic Theologians on the Metaphysics of Trinitarian Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010. — Although a Trinitarian study, McCall's careful work on personhood, hypostasis, and the metaphysics of the divine life informs everything Christological in this book. His insistence on logical clarity and conciliar fidelity has shaped my own approach.
Morris, Thomas V. The Logic of God Incarnate. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986. — The classic modern defense of the two-minds view of the Incarnation. Morris argues that Christ possessed two distinct minds — one divine, one human — interacting in a hierarchical "asymmetric accessing relation." I engage Morris extensively in Chapter 162 and ultimately prefer Loke's one-consciousness account, but Morris is essential reading.
Pawl, Timothy. In Defense of Conciliar Christology. Oxford Studies in Analytic Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. — A rigorous philosophical defense of the Christological definitions of the seven ecumenical councils, demonstrating their logical coherence using the tools of analytic philosophy. Pawl shows that classical conciliar Christology can absorb apparent contradictions (e.g., Christ being both passible and impassible) by attending carefully to the logic of natures and persons. I follow Pawl on conciliar fidelity even while preferring Loke's kryptic model for the experiential mechanics.
Wilkinson, Michael A. Crowned with Glory and Honor: A Chalcedonian Anthropology. Studies in Historical and Systematic Theology. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Academic, 2024. — Wilkinson develops a "Chalcedonian anthropology": the claim that proper theological anthropology must be normed by Christology, specifically by the Chalcedonian definition. If Christ's human nature includes a body and a rational soul, then human nature as such must include a body and a rational soul. The argument is deeply congenial to this book.
Works defending the existence of an immaterial soul, the irreducibility of consciousness, and the philosophical case against physicalism.
Chalmers, David J. The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. — Chalmers, himself not a theist, articulates the famous "hard problem of consciousness" and argues forcefully that subjective experience cannot be reduced to physical processes. The book is a touchstone for any philosophical case against physicalism. Christian dualists have rightly mined Chalmers's arguments even though his own constructive proposal (a kind of property dualism or panpsychism) is not theologically congenial.
Cooper, John W. Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000. — The classic evangelical defense of "holistic dualism" against monism and physicalism. Cooper argues that Scripture teaches a functional holism (body and soul are deeply integrated) that is ontologically dualist (the soul is a distinct substance that survives death). His exegesis of intermediate-state passages is the gold standard and is foundational for the biblical chapters of this work.
Hasker, William. The Emergent Self. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999. — Hasker proposes "emergent dualism": the soul is a genuinely immaterial substance, but it emerges from the brain rather than being created directly by God. The view is more sympathetic than physicalism, yet I argue that emergent dualism still struggles to account for the Incarnation (especially the triduum mortis) and creates difficulties for the soul's grounding in the divine creative act.
Lewis, C. S. Miracles: A Preliminary Study. London: Geoffrey Bles, 1947. — Chapter 3 ("The Cardinal Difficulty of Naturalism") contains Lewis's argument from reason: if naturalism is true, our cognitive faculties cannot be trusted, since they would be the product of nonrational causes. The argument is a popular forerunner of more technical contemporary work by Plantinga and Reppert.
Moreland, J. P. The Soul: How We Know It's Real and Why It Matters. Chicago: Moody, 2014. — A clear and pastorally minded defense of substance dualism. Moreland presents the philosophical arguments in accessible form and connects them to spiritual formation, ethics, and theology. An excellent entry point for readers who want a popular-level introduction without sacrificing substance.
Moreland, J. P., and Scott B. Rae. Body and Soul: Human Nature and the Crisis in Ethics. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2000. — A more technical companion to Moreland's later popular work. The book engages contemporary philosophy of mind, defends a Thomistic-flavored substance dualism, and traces the ethical implications. Especially valuable on personal identity and the metaphysical status of human persons.
Plantinga, Alvin. "Materialism and Christian Belief." In Persons: Human and Divine, edited by Peter van Inwagen and Dean Zimmerman, 99–141. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. — Plantinga argues that materialism about human persons sits uneasily with central Christian doctrines, including the Incarnation and the resurrection. The essay is a masterclass in how to press a metaphysical thesis against theological commitments without polemic.
Swinburne, Richard. The Christian God. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. — Swinburne offers a sustained philosophical defense of substance dualism alongside an analytic case for the Trinity and the Incarnation. His Christological proposal differs from Loke's, and I do not follow him on every point, but his rigor in defending the soul's existence is exemplary.
———. Mind, Brain, and Free Will. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. — A more recent and technical defense of substance dualism, agent causation, and libertarian free will. Swinburne presses the argument that mental events cannot be identified with brain events without remainder. Demanding but rewarding for readers who want the strongest contemporary philosophical case.
Taliaferro, Charles. Consciousness and the Mind of God. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. — A philosophically sophisticated defense of dualism by a Christian philosopher who also engages theistic implications. Taliaferro is irenic, careful, and historically literate. The book pairs well with Swinburne and Moreland and helps situate dualism within a wider theistic metaphysic.
Note on the dualism literature. Readers should know that "substance dualism" is a family of views, not a single position. The works above range from Cartesian dualism (Swinburne) to Thomistic hylomorphism (Moreland and Rae) to emergent dualism (Hasker). The book's argument does not depend on settling every intramural dispute; what it requires is that the soul be a real, distinct, immaterial subject capable of surviving the death of the body.
The principal works defending some version of Christian physicalism. These are the conversation partners the book most directly seeks to answer.
Baker, Lynne Rudder. Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. — Baker proposes a "constitution view" on which a person is constituted by, but not identical to, a human body. The view is sometimes presented as a middle path between dualism and reductive materialism. I argue that it collapses under pressure from the Incarnation and the triduum mortis: a body that ceases to function cannot constitute a person, yet on this view the person of Christ requires the body.
Corcoran, Kevin. Rethinking Human Nature: A Christian Materialist Alternative to the Soul. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006. — A clear and accessible Christian defense of a constitution-style materialism. Corcoran is irenic and his pastoral motivations are genuine. Yet his account of the resurrection and the intermediate state strains the biblical evidence, and his Christology runs into the problems chronicled in Part V of this book.
Green, Joel B. Body, Soul, and Human Life: The Nature of Humanity in the Bible. Studies in Theological Interpretation. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008. — The most prominent biblical-studies defense of physicalism. Green argues that the biblical writers presuppose a holistic, monistic anthropology rather than a body-soul dualism. The book is exegetically lively but, in my judgment, leans heavily on selective readings and underweights the intermediate-state passages that Cooper handles so carefully.
Loftin, R. Keith, and Joshua R. Farris, eds. Christian Physicalism? Philosophical Theological Criticisms. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018. — The indispensable critical companion to the Christian physicalist literature. Chapters 6–10 (on Holy Saturday, the Incarnation, the "two sons" worry, the death of Christ, and the Pelagian implication of materialism) drive much of the argument in Part V of this book. I cite individual chapters by author and title.
Merricks, Trenton. Objects and Persons. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. — Merricks defends an eliminativist materialism: most "objects" do not really exist, but persons do, as living organisms with mental properties. His framework has been influential among Christian materialists. I find his account of personal identity through death and resurrection to face serious objections, particularly when the case of Christ's death is pressed.
Murphy, Nancey. Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. — A clear popular-level case for nonreductive physicalism. Murphy argues that the soul-talk of Scripture and tradition can be redescribed in terms of higher-level functional capacities of an embodied human organism. The redescription strategy proves too thin to bear the doctrinal weight Christology places on it.
van Inwagen, Peter. "The Possibility of Resurrection." International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 9 (1978): 114–21. — Van Inwagen's famous "body-snatching" essay proposed that God preserves the actual body of the deceased to ground the resurrection on a materialist anthropology. The proposal is honest about the difficulties materialism faces, and I engage it as a representative attempt to solve a problem I take to be insoluble apart from a soul.
———. Material Beings. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990. — Van Inwagen's broader metaphysics, on which only living organisms (and simples) really exist. Widely discussed in Christian materialist circles. Even readers who reject the wider framework will benefit from the book's careful treatment of composition and persistence.
Primary patristic sources and major historical-theological treatments of the development of orthodox Christology.
Athanasius. On the Incarnation. Translated by John Behr. Popular Patristics Series. Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2011. — The classic fourth-century defense of the Incarnation against Arian and other reductive Christologies. Athanasius's insistence that "He was made man that we might be made God" frames the soteriological stakes of getting Christology right. The Behr translation pairs the English with the Greek text.
Cyril of Alexandria. On the Unity of Christ. Translated by John Anthony McGuckin. Popular Patristics Series. Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1995. — Cyril's mature articulation of the unity of Christ's person against Nestorianism. His emphasis on a single subject of all Christ's actions remains the bedrock of Chalcedonian Christology and is fully consonant with Loke's one-consciousness model.
Gregory of Nazianzus. On God and Christ: The Five Theological Orations and Two Letters to Cledonius. Translated by Frederick Williams and Lionel Wickham. Popular Patristics Series. Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2002. — Includes Epistle 101, the locus classicus of the anti-Apollinarian principle: "What is not assumed is not healed." This single line drives the central argument of this book against physicalism: if Christ did not assume an immaterial human soul, our souls are not saved.
John of Damascus. Writings. Translated by Frederic H. Chase Jr. The Fathers of the Church 37. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1958. — Includes the Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, the mature patristic synthesis on Christ's two natures, two wills, and two operations. The natural endpoint for any historical survey from Nicaea to Damascus.
Maximus the Confessor. On Difficulties in the Church Fathers: The Ambigua. Translated by Nicholas Constas. 2 vols. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 28–29. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. — Maximus's writings on Christ's two wills are foundational for the dyothelite settlement of the Third Council of Constantinople. A few key passages on Gethsemane and the human will of Christ repay slow reading.
McGuckin, John Anthony. Saint Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2004. — The standard scholarly study of the events and theology surrounding the Council of Ephesus (431). McGuckin's narrative is lively and his sympathy for Cyril genuine without being uncritical. Indispensable historical background for Chapters 11–13.
Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine. 5 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971–89. — Pelikan's magisterial five-volume history remains the most useful single overview of the development of Christology and Trinitarian theology. Volume 1 (The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition, 100–600) is especially relevant for the patristic chapters.
Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologiae, Tertia Pars. Various editions. — Aquinas's treatment of the Incarnation in the Third Part of the Summa is the high-water mark of medieval Christology. His discussions of the hypostatic union, Christ's two wills, and especially the triduum mortis (whether Christ remained a man during the three days) are foundational for the argument of Chapters 21–22.
Empirical research on veridical NDEs as data relevant to substance dualism and the conscious intermediate state.
Greyson, Bruce. After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal About Life and Beyond. New York: St. Martin's Essentials, 2021. — A career-spanning summary by one of the founding researchers of the field. Greyson is cautious, careful with data, and refreshingly humble about what NDEs can and cannot establish. The best single starting point for readers new to the literature.
Long, Jeffrey, with Paul Perry. Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences. New York: HarperOne, 2010. — Long, a radiation oncologist, summarizes findings from a large online database of NDE accounts. The book is more popularly written than van Lommel's, but the data set is valuable. Long is more confident than Greyson in drawing afterlife conclusions, and readers should weigh his claims accordingly.
Moody, Raymond A. Life After Life: The Investigation of a Phenomenon — Survival of Bodily Death. New York: HarperOne, 1975 (rev. 2015). — The book that launched the modern NDE field. Moody's anecdotal methodology has been refined by later researchers, but his original taxonomy of NDE features remains influential. Important for historical context.
Parnia, Sam. Erasing Death: The Science That Is Rewriting the Boundaries Between Life and Death. New York: HarperOne, 2013. — Parnia, a critical-care physician, leads the AWARE study, the largest prospective study of NDEs during cardiac arrest. The book is medically rigorous and resists overclaim. Particularly valuable for its treatment of veridical perception during clinically documented absence of brain activity.
Ring, Kenneth, and Sharon Cooper. Mindsight: Near-Death and Out-of-Body Experiences in the Blind. 2nd ed. Bloomfield, CT: IANDS, 2008. — A focused study of NDE accounts from people who have been blind from birth, who report visual experiences during their NDEs. The data are striking and difficult to explain on physicalist assumptions about perception requiring an intact visual cortex.
Sabom, Michael B. Recollections of Death: A Medical Investigation. New York: Harper & Row, 1982. — An early careful medical study by a cardiologist who began as a skeptic. Sabom's documentation of veridical perceptual claims by patients during cardiac arrest set a methodological standard. Read alongside Parnia for the strongest empirical case.
van Lommel, Pim. Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience. New York: HarperOne, 2010. — The fullest book-length statement of van Lommel's prospective study of cardiac-arrest survivors, originally published in The Lancet (2001). The empirical data are first-rate; van Lommel's quantum-consciousness speculation is less compelling and should be read with discrimination.
Works on conditional immortality and annihilationism, especially as they intersect with anthropology and Christology.
Date, Christopher M., Gregory G. Stump, and Joshua W. Anderson, eds. Rethinking Hell: Readings in Evangelical Conditionalism. Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2014. — A wide-ranging reader bringing together major evangelical voices on conditional immortality. Especially useful for seeing the diversity within conditionalism on questions of anthropology.
Fudge, Edward William. The Fire That Consumes: A Biblical and Historical Study of the Doctrine of Final Punishment. 3rd ed. Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2011. — The standard evangelical defense of conditional immortality. Fudge is a careful exegete and his treatment of the relevant biblical material deserves engagement. A central argument of Chapter 33 is that Fudge's exegetical case for CI does not require — and is in fact better served by — a dualist anthropology rather than the physicalism with which CI is sometimes paired.3
Stackhouse, John G., Jr. "Terminal Punishment." In Four Views on Hell, 2nd ed., edited by Preston Sprinkle, 61–81. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2016. — A representative recent statement of conditional immortality. Stackhouse helpfully distinguishes the question of duration (eternal versus terminal) from the question of mode (conscious versus unconscious). His framing supports the contention that CI does not require physicalism.
Wright, N. T. Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church. New York: HarperOne, 2008. — Although not a CI volume per se, Wright's recovery of resurrection-centered eschatology has shaped the conversation in which CI authors operate. His handling of the intermediate state is thinner than I would like, but his pastoral and missional emphasis on bodily resurrection corrects real distortions in popular evangelical eschatology.
A closing word. No bibliography is comprehensive, and this one is not. If a reader were to ask which five books would do the most to clarify the case I have been making, I would name Loke's Kryptic Model, Pawl's In Defense of Conciliar Christology, Cooper's Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting, Wilkinson's Crowned with Glory and Honor, and the Loftin-Farris volume Christian Physicalism?. Read them slowly, side by side, and the shape of the argument will come into focus.
One last note. In each annotation I have tried to be honest about where I disagree with an author, even where I lean heavily on their work. I am genuinely indebted to Christian physicalists like Murphy, Green, and Corcoran for forcing me to think harder about my own position. Disagreement, when offered in love, is one of the better gifts.
1 A few entries genuinely belong in two categories. I have noted the cross-listing in the annotation where it matters and avoided duplicating the entry. ↩
2 See Chapter 16, "The Two-Minds View — Thomas Morris and the Dual-Consciousness Model," for the extended engagement with Morris and the comparison with Loke's one-consciousness account. ↩
3 See Chapter 33, "Physicalism and the Conditional Immortality Movement — A Comprehensive Assessment," for the full argument that CI is not entailed by, and not best supported by, physicalist anthropology. ↩