Chapter 35

Answering Physicalist Objections — Common Responses and Why They Fail

So far in this book, I have argued that physicalism cannot make sense of the Incarnation. The arguments have been long and detailed, and in places they have been pointed. But I want to be honest with you: every argument I have made has critics. Christian physicalists are not foolish people. Many of them are sincere, careful, and committed believers. They have written serious books defending their view. They have also offered serious objections to mine. If I do not answer those objections, I have not made my case.

This chapter takes up the eight most common physicalist responses I have heard over the years — both objections to dualism and attempted rescues of physicalist Christology. For each one, I will try to state it as fairly and strongly as I can. Then I will explain why I do not find it convincing. My hope is that even readers who still disagree will at least see that physicalists have not yet given a satisfying answer to the heart of the problem.

Objection 1: "Biblical Anthropology Is Holistic, Not Dualistic"

This is probably the most common objection I hear. Christian physicalists like Joel Green and Nancey Murphy point out — correctly — that the Bible never describes a person as a soul trapped in a body the way Plato did. Hebrew thought treats the human being as a unified whole. The body matters. Embodiment is good. The hope of the gospel is bodily resurrection, not escape from the body. So, the argument goes, the Bible is "holistic," and dualism therefore must be a foreign import.

I want to be clear: there is something right about this. The Bible is holistic. The body is good. We are not ghosts piloting meat-suits. If "dualism" meant the Platonic or Cartesian picture in which body and soul are two strangers awkwardly tied together, I would reject it too.

But here is the problem with the objection: holism and dualism are not opposites. John W. Cooper has shown this carefully. The position he defends — and the one I hold — is called holistic dualism. Body and soul are deeply, intimately, functionally one during this life. They are made for each other. They influence each other in every direction. Yet they are still two distinct things, and at death they can come apart for a time before being reunited at the resurrection.¹ The Bible can teach both. And as I argued in Chapter 3, it does.

The physicalist objection works only if you assume that "holistic" must mean "monistic." That assumption has never been proved; it has only been repeated. Cooper's careful biblical work — and the conscious intermediate state passages such as Philippians 1:23, 2 Corinthians 5:6–8, and Luke 23:43 — show that Scripture affirms both the deep unity of the person and the soul's survival of death.² Holism and dualism, properly understood, are friends, not enemies. So this first objection misses its target.

Objection 2: "Dualism Is a Greek Import, Not a Biblical Idea"

The second objection often follows on the heels of the first. Dualism, the physicalist says, came into the church through Plato, by way of the church fathers, and it has been distorting Christian thought ever since. The real biblical view is unitary; we should purge ourselves of the Greek mistake.

This sounds powerful, but I think it commits what philosophers call the genetic fallacy — the mistake of judging an idea by where it came from rather than by whether it is true. Even if every dualist Christian had been influenced by Plato (and that is far from clear), it would not show that dualism is wrong. Trinitarian language about ousia (οὐσία) and hypostasis (ὑπόστασις) was also borrowed from Greek philosophy. So was the language of "person" and "nature." We do not throw out the Trinity because it uses Greek vocabulary; we ask whether the Greek vocabulary tells the truth about the biblical God.³

And the historical claim itself is shaky. Cooper has shown that the body-soul distinction was already present in Second Temple Judaism long before Greek influence reshaped Christian theology, and that the New Testament writers inherit a Jewish anthropology, not a Platonic one.⁴ The Hebrew nephesh (נֶפֶשׁ) and ruach (רוּחַ), the Greek psychē (ψυχή) and pneuma (πνεῦμα) — these were ordinary biblical words, not Platonic imports.

It is also worth saying that physicalism is no less philosophically rooted than dualism. The materialism of Hobbes, the naturalism of the Enlightenment, the logical positivism of the twentieth century — these are the streams that have shaped modern Christian physicalism, every bit as much as Plato shaped some Christian dualists.⁵ If "Greek roots" sinks dualism, "Enlightenment roots" sinks physicalism. Better, I think, simply to ask what is true.

Objection 3: "Neuroscience Has Shown That the Mind Depends on the Brain"

The third objection comes from neuroscience. We know that brain damage changes personality. Strokes change speech. Alzheimer's destroys memory. Drugs change mood. Therefore — the argument concludes — the mind just is the brain, and there is no separate soul.

I take this objection seriously, because it is not silly. The data are real. But the argument confuses dependence with identity. To say that A depends on B during a particular state of affairs is not to say that A is identical to B. Consider a violinist and a violin. The violinist's music depends entirely on the violin: smash the violin, and the music stops. But the music is not identical to the violin. The violinist could pick up another instrument tomorrow.

The classic version of this point is the radio analogy. A radio depends on its antenna and circuitry to play a broadcast. Damage the antenna, and the music gets distorted. Smash the radio, and the music stops coming from this device. But the broadcast itself is not identical to the radio. It is a signal that the radio receives. In the same way, the dualist can say that the brain is the instrument through which the soul interacts with the physical world during this life. Damage the brain, and the soul's expression is impaired. But the soul itself is not identical to the brain.⁶

Two more points strengthen this reply. First, the very people who experience NDEs — heart-stopped, EEG-flat, brain-disabled patients — sometimes report clearer, more vivid consciousness during the event than in ordinary life, including verifiable observations they could not have made from the bed.⁷ If consciousness were identical to brain activity, this should not happen. Second, the so-called "hard problem of consciousness" (David Chalmers) shows that physicalism has no clear story of why brain activity gives rise to felt experience at all.⁸ Neuroscience can map correlations all day; it cannot explain why those correlations produce a "what it is like" to be a person. So the appeal to neuroscience does not actually deliver what the physicalist needs.

Objection 4: "Physicalism Can Save the Incarnation Through Divine Reconstitution"

Now we move from the philosophical objections to the Christological ones. These are where the heart of the argument lies. The first Christological reply is the simplest: yes, on physicalism, the body of Jesus dies and is buried. But the same God who created the body in the first place can reconstitute it on Easter morning. The Incarnation is preserved by divine power.

I find this attempted rescue moving in its faith — but it cannot solve the problem. The issue is not whether God can raise the body. Of course He can. The issue is the gap. From late Friday afternoon through early Sunday morning, the body of Jesus is dead. There is no soul (on physicalism). There is no functioning human nature. So during those roughly thirty-six to forty hours, what is the Son of God united to?

As I argued in Chapter 21, this is the single most devastating argument against physicalist Christology. Reconstitution is a fix for the resurrection, not a fix for the triduum mortis. The Chalcedonian definition states that the two natures are united achōristōs (ἀχωρίστως) — "without separation." That word does not contain a stopwatch. It does not say "without separation, except for the thirty-six hours when the body is dead." It says without separation, full stop.⁹ If there is any window in which the Son is not incarnate, the Incarnation has been broken — and a broken Incarnation cannot save us.

Objection 5: "The Son Remained United to the Body in the Tomb"

A more sophisticated reply tries to close the gap. The Son, says this view, never separated from the human nature at all. He remained united to the body in the tomb the whole time. The body was dead, yes, but it was still His body, and that is enough.

I want to give this its due, because there is something instinctively right about it. We do think Jesus' body was still His during those three days. Joseph and Nicodemus did not bury "a corpse"; they buried Him. Even on dualism, I would say the Son remained united to the body in the tomb (along with His separated soul). The instinct is correct.

The problem is that the physicalist version of this reply makes a corpse do work that a corpse cannot do. On physicalism, the human nature of Jesus just is the human body. So if the body is what the Son is united to, and the body is dead, then the Son is hypostatically united to dead matter — to decomposing tissue, to a thing without consciousness, will, intellect, or life. But the councils did not define the Incarnation as "the union of the divine nature with a piece of dead matter." They defined it as "the union of the divine nature with a complete human nature."¹⁰ A corpse is the absence of a human nature, not the presence of one.

Wilkinson presses this point sharply: the human nature Christ assumed, on the conciliar pattern, is what it is to be human as such — and what it is to be human is to be a body-soul composite, not a piece of biological matter.¹¹ A dead body is no more a human nature than the wreckage of a violin is a musical instrument. The materials are still there; the thing itself is gone.

Objection 6: "Constitution Christology Solves the Problem"

The constitution view, defended by Lynne Rudder Baker and Kevin Corcoran, is the most metaphysically sophisticated form of Christian physicalism. It avoids saying the person is identical to the body. Instead, the person is constituted by the body, the way a statue is constituted by clay. The clay is not the statue, even though there is no statue without the clay. Persons, similarly, are not bodies, even though they are constituted by them.¹²

Some Christian philosophers have hoped that this opens up room for a "constitution Christology" in which the Son constitutes a human nature without being identical to it, and so survives the death of the body. I have to admit, when I first read this proposal, I thought it might be the strongest physicalist reply on offer.

But on closer inspection, the same triduum problem comes back. On the constitution view, when the body that constitutes the person ceases to function as a living human organism, the human person constituted by it ceases to exist. Constitution is not separable; it requires the constituting matter to be doing what constitutes a person. A pile of dead biological tissue does not constitute a person any more than a shattered statue is still a statue. So the human person Jesus, on a strict constitution view, ceases to exist at death — and we are right back at the triduum problem.¹³

Now, a clever physicalist might respond: "Then let the Son constitute a corpse during the three days." But this is just Objection 5 in fancier dress. A corpse is not a person. The Son might be related to dead matter in some way, but He is not united to a complete human nature. Constitution, like reconstitution, is a fine tool for some metaphysical jobs. It is not a tool for saving the Incarnation across Holy Saturday.

Objection 7: "Resurrection Immediacy Eliminates the Gap"

This reply takes a very different route. It admits the triduum problem and tries to remove it by removing the triduum altogether. The proposal is "resurrection immediacy": at the moment of death, the person is immediately raised. There is no gap, because there is no time during which the person is dead-but-not-yet-raised.

Some physicalists who hold this view extend it to ordinary believers as well: every Christian, on this view, is resurrected at the instant of death. There is no intermediate state because there is no soul to be in one.¹⁴

I appreciate the directness of this move. It shows how seriously these scholars take the gap problem — they are willing to revise our understanding of death itself to avoid it. But the cost is too high. Three difficulties stand out.

First, this contradicts the plain narrative of the Gospels. The body of Jesus was in the tomb. The disciples buried it. The women came to anoint it. The angel said, "He is not here, for He has risen" (Matt. 28:6) — implying that He had been there. The forty hours or so between burial and resurrection are not a Gospel illusion; they are a Gospel fact.

Second, it destroys Holy Saturday entirely as a theological category. The Apostles' Creed says Jesus "was crucified, dead, and buried; He descended to the dead." The descent is not a side note — it is part of the church's confession (1 Pet. 3:18–20). Resurrection immediacy makes the descent into a fiction (see Chapter 23).

Third, applied to ordinary believers, it contradicts a wide range of New Testament passages on the future resurrection as a single corporate event tied to the return of Christ (1 Cor. 15:23, 51–52; 1 Thess. 4:13–17). Cooper notes that resurrection immediacy also implies two distinct bodies with no continuity, contradicting Paul's clear teaching that the resurrection body is the present body transformed.¹⁵ The cure is worse than the disease.

Objection 8: "Dualism Has Its Own Problems — Interaction and Pairing"

Finally, the physicalist may go on the offensive: even if physicalism has some difficulties, dualism has its own. Two are most often cited. The interaction problem: how can an immaterial soul cause changes in a material brain? They have nothing in common. The pairing problem (Jaegwon Kim): how does my soul interact with my brain rather than with someone else's? Causation seems to need spatial location, and the soul has none.

I take both problems seriously, but I do not think they are decisive. Three responses:

First, an unsolved puzzle is not a refutation. The interaction problem is a puzzle; it is not a contradiction. We have direct experience of mental causation every day — I decide to lift my arm, and my arm lifts. That experience is more certain than any philosophical theory that claims it is impossible.¹⁶ Second, physicalism has its own equally serious puzzle: the hard problem of consciousness. If physicalism cannot explain how matter produces felt experience, it is in no position to demand that dualism explain how soul moves matter.¹⁷ Third, the pairing problem assumes that all causation is spatial. That is a metaphysical assumption, not a fact. God Himself is non-spatial, and yet we believe He acts in the world. If divine causation can be non-spatial, there is no principled reason soul-body causation cannot also operate by means other than spatial contact.¹⁸

Conclusion: None of the Eight Replies Succeeds

So where does this leave us? I have tried, in this chapter, to take the strongest physicalist replies seriously. I have tried to state them as their best defenders state them. And one by one, I have argued that each one fails — sometimes because it confuses related but distinct claims (holism with monism, dependence with identity), sometimes because it commits a logical fallacy (the genetic fallacy), and sometimes because it patches one Christological problem (Easter) while leaving the deeper one (Holy Saturday) untouched.

Underneath all eight replies, the same fact remains. If there is no soul, then at the death of Christ the human nature ceased to be. And if the human nature ceased to be, the Incarnation was interrupted. And if the Incarnation was interrupted, then for at least a day and a half the Second Person of the Trinity was not God-and-man. Reconstitution does not heal this. Tomb-union does not heal it. Constitution Christology does not heal it. Resurrection immediacy does not heal it; it just renames the problem. And turning the tables with the interaction or pairing problem does not heal it; it only points out that dualism has unsolved puzzles, which everyone already knew.

What does heal it is the older view: that Christ assumed a complete human nature — body and soul — and that at death the soul went to the Father, while the body lay in the tomb, and the Son remained united to both. The Incarnation never broke. He was God and man on Friday, on Saturday, and on Sunday morning. He is God and man now, seated at the right hand of the Father. He will be God and man forever. That is the Christology the councils confessed, the church has always sung, and the Word made flesh requires.¹⁹

I am happy to admit that physicalists who hold to it as a metaphysical theory may still hold orthodox Christological intentions. Many of them love Jesus deeply. My point has never been about their hearts; it has been about the structural logic of their position. And the structural logic, after all the replies are heard, still leads to a broken Incarnation — and a broken Incarnation cannot save us.