Chapter 32

Medieval Through Modern — The Enduring Consensus and the Rise of Christian Physicalism

Introduction: A Tradition Unbroken — Until Now

In the previous two chapters, we traced the church's understanding of Christ's human soul from the earliest fathers through John of Damascus (Chapter 30) and examined in detail how the ecumenical councils formally condemned Apollinarianism — the denial that Christ possesses a human rational soul (Chapter 31). What emerged from that survey was a remarkable consensus: from the apostolic period through the close of the patristic era, every major theological voice in the church affirmed that Jesus Christ possesses not only a human body but also a genuine, immaterial human soul. The councils did not merely suggest this. They defined it. They enshrined it in creedal language. They pronounced anathemas against anyone who denied it.

But what happened next? Did the church's commitment to Christ's human soul waver during the medieval period? Did the Reformers abandon it? Did the great theologians of the post-Reformation era quietly set it aside? And if not — if the tradition remained rock-solid for century after century — then where did Christian physicalism come from?

These are the questions we need to answer in this chapter. And the answers, I believe, are both reassuring and sobering. Reassuring, because the consensus held. From the medieval period through the Reformation, through post-Reformation scholasticism, and well into the modern era, every major Christian theologian and every major confessional document continued to affirm what the fathers and the councils had taught: that a human being is composed of a material body and an immaterial soul, and that Christ assumed both when He became incarnate. The tradition is unbroken for well over a millennium after the patristic period.

But the answer is also sobering, because in the late twentieth century, something unprecedented happened. A small but influential group of Christian philosophers, theologians, and biblical scholars began to argue that human beings are not composed of body and soul at all. They argued that human beings are purely physical organisms — that the "soul" is not a real entity but merely a way of talking about the capacities and functions of the physical body. This movement, known as Christian physicalism, represents a dramatic break from the entire prior tradition. No church father held it. No medieval theologian taught it. No Reformer believed it. No post-Reformation confessional document affirms it. Christian physicalism is, in the fullest sense of the word, a novelty.

In this chapter, I want to walk through the historical record from the medieval period to the present day, showing that the dualist consensus endured without interruption — and then trace the origins and motivations of Christian physicalism, so that we can understand exactly what it claims, where it came from, and why it represents such a dramatic departure from the tradition. Along the way, we will pay special attention to the Christological implications. As we will see, every major theologian in this long tradition — from Thomas Aquinas to Martin Luther to John Calvin to the Westminster divines — understood that Christ's human soul is essential to the Incarnation. If the soul does not exist, then neither does the Christ of the councils.

The Medieval Period: Thomas Aquinas and Hylomorphic Christology

The towering figure of medieval theology is, without question, Thomas Aquinas (ca. 1224–1274). Aquinas did not simply repeat the patristic tradition — he developed it, refined it, and gave it a new philosophical framework drawn from Aristotle. But on the central question that concerns us — whether Christ possesses a genuine human soul — Aquinas was in complete agreement with the fathers and the councils. He affirmed it emphatically.

Aquinas's philosophical framework is known as hylomorphism (from the Greek words hylē, meaning "matter," and morphē, meaning "form"). On this view, a human being is a composite of prime matter and a rational soul. The soul is what Aquinas called the forma corporis — the "form of the body." This means that the soul is the organizing principle that makes a body a living, human body. Without the soul, the body is just matter. With the soul, the body becomes a complete human being.¹

Now, Aquinas's hylomorphism is not identical to what we have been calling substance dualism. In strict Thomistic philosophy, the soul is not a separate "substance" in the way that Descartes would later describe it. Rather, the soul is a "substantial form" — an ontological reality that gives existence and organization to the body. Scholars debate whether hylomorphism is truly a form of substance dualism or something distinct. For our purposes, the critical point is this: on Aquinas's view, the soul is a genuine, immaterial reality that is ontologically distinct from the body and that can exist apart from the body after death.² Whatever label we give it — hylomorphism, Thomistic dualism, form-matter dualism — it is emphatically not physicalism. The soul is real. The soul is immaterial. The soul survives the death of the body. And Christ possesses a human soul.

Aquinas applied his hylomorphic framework directly to Christology. In his Summa Theologiae, he devoted extensive discussion to the Incarnation, affirming that Christ's human nature is a composite of a human body and a rational soul. The eternal Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, assumed a complete human nature — not merely a body, but a body animated and organized by a rational soul with its own intellect and will.³ For Aquinas, this was not optional. It was demanded by the conciliar definitions, particularly by the Chalcedonian formula that Christ is "truly man of a rational soul and a body" — and it was demanded by the soteriological logic of Gregory of Nazianzus's axiom: what is not assumed is not healed (see Chapter 12 for the full development of this argument).

Aquinas on the Triduum Mortis

Perhaps the most significant aspect of Aquinas's Christology for our purposes is his treatment of the triduum mortis — the three days between Christ's death on Good Friday and His resurrection on Easter Sunday. This is the period that, as we argued in Chapter 21, poses the most devastating challenge to physicalist Christology. And Aquinas's handling of it is instructive precisely because it shows how deeply his entire framework depends on the reality of Christ's human soul.

Here is the problem Aquinas had to solve. When Jesus died on the cross, His soul separated from His body. The body was placed in the tomb. The soul, according to Scripture and the creeds, descended to the realm of the dead (what Aquinas called the limbus patrum, the "limbo of the fathers" — the place where the righteous dead of the Old Testament waited for deliverance). So during those three days, Christ's human nature was in a divided state: the body was in one place, and the soul was in another.

The question Aquinas faced was this: did the hypostatic union — the union of the divine nature and the human nature in the one Person of the Son — survive this separation? Or was the Incarnation interrupted when soul and body were torn apart at death?

Aquinas's answer was both brilliant and deeply dependent on dualism. He argued that during the triduum, the Person of the Son remained united to both the separated soul and the body in the tomb. The hypostatic union was not dissolved. The Son was still united to a human soul — the soul that descended to the dead. And the Son was still united to a human body — the body that lay in the tomb. What was temporarily lost was the union of soul and body with each other, not the union of either with the divine Person.⁴

This is a remarkable solution, and it has profound implications for our argument. Notice what Aquinas is doing: he is preserving the continuity of the Incarnation precisely by appealing to the soul. The soul provides the bridge between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. The Son never ceased to be incarnate because He never ceased to be united to a human soul — even when that soul was separated from the body. The soul is what makes the Incarnation continuous.

Now, Aquinas acknowledged that this is an unusual state. The soul separated from the body is not a complete human nature. The natural state of the soul is to be united to the body, and a soul without a body is in an incomplete condition. So Aquinas was careful to say that during the triduum, the Son was not united to a complete human nature in the ordinary sense. But He was still united to both components of human nature — soul and body — even though they were temporarily separated from each other.⁵

Aquinas also had to address a tricky question: how could the body in the tomb still be called "Christ's body" if it was no longer animated by a soul? After all, on hylomorphic principles, the soul is the form of the body — and without the form, the body is just matter. Aquinas's answer was that the hypostatic union itself maintained the body as Christ's body. Even though the soul was no longer informing the body, the Person of the Son was still united to it, and this divine union prevented the body from losing its identity as Christ's body entirely.⁶

What I want us to see clearly is this: even this complex and somewhat strained aspect of Aquinas's Christology still assumes and depends on the existence of the soul. Without the soul, Aquinas has nothing to work with. If there is no soul to descend to the dead, if there is no soul to maintain the hypostatic union, if there is no soul to be reunited with the body at the resurrection — then the entire framework collapses. Aquinas's Christology, for all its sophisticated hylomorphic terminology, is built on the same foundation as the patristic Christology that preceded it: Christ has a body and a soul, and both are essential.

Other Medieval Voices

Aquinas was the dominant voice of medieval theology, but he was not alone. Before him, Peter Lombard (ca. 1096–1160), whose Sentences became the standard theological textbook for centuries, affirmed the body-soul composition of Christ's human nature and discussed the state of Christ's soul during the triduum.⁷ Bonaventure (1221–1274), Aquinas's Franciscan contemporary, likewise affirmed that Christ assumed a complete human nature consisting of body and rational soul. Duns Scotus (ca. 1266–1308), the great Franciscan philosopher-theologian, affirmed the same, though he developed a somewhat different metaphysical framework for understanding the relationship between soul and body.⁸

The point is that there was no medieval dissent on this question. The theologians debated many things — the precise relationship between soul and body, the nature of the soul's existence after death, the mechanics of the resurrection, the relationship between intellect and will. But they did not debate whether Christ has a human soul. That was settled. The councils had spoken. The fathers had spoken. The medieval doctors received that teaching and worked within it.

As Joshua Farris observes in his survey of theological anthropology, hylomorphism as developed by Aquinas was "sufficiently dualist in its ontology that it did not challenge the church's basic teaching that man is a composition of an immaterial soul and a material body."⁹ Whether we classify Aquinas as a substance dualist in the strict sense or as a hylomorphic dualist of a distinctive kind, the result is the same: he affirmed the reality and necessity of the immaterial soul — for human beings in general and for Christ in particular.

The Reformation: Luther, Calvin, and the Continuing Consensus

The sixteenth-century Reformation was one of the most dramatic upheavals in the history of Christianity. Martin Luther (1483–1546) and John Calvin (1509–1564) challenged the authority of the papacy, rejected the doctrine of purgatory, reformed the understanding of justification, and reshaped the church's relationship to Scripture, tradition, and culture. The Reformation changed nearly everything.

But it did not change the church's teaching on the human soul. And it did not change the church's Christological commitment to the view that Christ possesses a genuine human soul.

Martin Luther

Luther's theology of the Incarnation centered on the concept of the admirabile commercium — the "wondrous exchange." In the Incarnation, the eternal Son of God takes on everything that belongs to us — our nature, our weakness, our mortality, our sin (by imputation) — and gives us everything that belongs to Him — His righteousness, His life, His fellowship with the Father. This exchange presupposes that Christ assumed a complete human nature. If He did not take on everything human, the exchange is incomplete. What He does not assume, He cannot redeem.¹⁰

Luther affirmed without hesitation that Christ possesses a human soul. In his Christological writings, Luther insisted that in the Incarnation, the Son assumed "a true human body and a rational soul."¹¹ He understood the Chalcedonian definition as authoritative, and he did not question the body-soul composition of Christ's human nature. For Luther, the whole point of the Incarnation was that God entered into the fullness of human experience — body and soul — so that the whole human being might be saved.

Luther did have his own distinctive Christological emphases. He developed a robust doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum — the communication of attributes — arguing that because the two natures are united in one Person, the properties of each nature can be predicated of the whole Person. This led to his controversial teaching about the ubiquity of Christ's human nature — the claim that Christ's body, after the ascension, is present everywhere because it shares in the divine attribute of omnipresence. This was a point of sharp disagreement with Reformed theology (as we will see with Calvin). But the debate between Luther and the Reformed tradition was not about whether Christ has a human soul — both sides agreed on that. The debate was about how the two natures relate to each other and how the properties of one nature are shared with the other.

Luther's Small and Large Catechisms, his sermons, and his theological writings all reflect a straightforward body-soul anthropology. Human beings have bodies and souls. Death is the separation of the soul from the body. Christ experienced this separation on the cross. And the resurrection is the reunification of body and soul in glorified form. None of this was controversial for Luther. It was simply the received Christian teaching, grounded in Scripture and affirmed by the councils.

John Calvin

Calvin's treatment of Christ's human soul is even more explicit and developed than Luther's. In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin devoted careful attention to the question of Christ's human nature, and he was emphatic that Christ possesses a genuine human soul.

In Institutes II.13, Calvin discusses the humanity of Christ in detail. He argues that Christ assumed a complete human nature — not merely a body but a body and a rational soul. Calvin writes that Christ "clothed himself with our flesh" and took on "a true human soul" in order to be our mediator. For Calvin, the soul is not a peripheral feature of Christ's humanity. It is central. Christ's human soul is the seat of His human suffering, His human obedience, and His human solidarity with us.¹²

In Institutes II.14, Calvin turns to the relationship between Christ's two natures, affirming the Chalcedonian framework: two complete natures — divine and human — united in one Person, without confusion, change, division, or separation. Calvin is careful to maintain the distinction between the natures while affirming their union in the Person of the Son. And the human nature, for Calvin, always includes the soul.

Calvin also addressed the soul in his broader anthropology. In Institutes I.15, he discussed human nature in terms of body and soul, calling the soul "an immortal yet created essence, which is his nobler part."¹³ Calvin explicitly endorsed a form of substance dualism, drawing on Plato's understanding of the body-soul distinction while correcting what he saw as Plato's excesses (particularly the devaluation of the body). For Calvin, both body and soul are created good by God, and both are assumed by Christ in the Incarnation.

One particularly important piece of evidence for Calvin's dualism is his early treatise Psychopannychia (1534), written against the Anabaptist teaching of "soul sleep" — the view that the soul is unconscious between death and the resurrection. Calvin argued vigorously that the soul survives death and is conscious in the intermediate state. The souls of believers are with Christ in paradise immediately after death, awaiting the final resurrection of the body. Calvin's entire argument in Psychopannychia presupposes that the soul is a real, distinct entity that can exist and function apart from the body.¹⁴

Calvin's Christological emphasis on Christ's human soul had significant soteriological implications. Calvin taught that Christ's human soul was the primary locus of His atoning suffering. In Gethsemane, Christ's soul was "very sorrowful, even to death" (Matthew 26:38). On the cross, Christ bore not only physical pain but also spiritual anguish — the dread of divine judgment, the weight of sin, the agony of separation. For Calvin, this soul-suffering was essential to the atonement. If Christ did not have a human soul, He could not have borne our sins in the deepest sense. His suffering would have been merely physical — a matter of nails and blood — and not the profound, soul-wrenching agony that our salvation required.¹⁵

The extra Calvinisticum — Calvin's teaching that the Son, even during the Incarnation, continued to sustain the universe beyond the boundaries of Christ's human nature — is also relevant here. Calvin insisted that when the Son became incarnate, He did not cease to be the infinite, eternal God who upholds all things. The Son was fully present in the human nature (body and soul) assumed at the Incarnation, and He was simultaneously present everywhere as God. This is strikingly similar to the kryptic model of the Incarnation that we discussed in Chapter 17 — and it presupposes a robust view of Christ's human soul as a genuine, finite, creaturely reality that is distinct from the infinite divine nature.¹⁶

The Reformation Consensus

What is striking about the Reformation period is how little controversy there was on the question of the soul. Luther and Calvin disagreed on many things — the nature of the Eucharist, the communication of attributes, the nature of predestination, the structure of church governance. But they did not disagree on the body-soul composition of human nature or on the reality of Christ's human soul. These were settled questions for both traditions. The Reformation was a revolution in soteriology and ecclesiology, but it was not a revolution in anthropology or Christology at the fundamental level. On these points, the Reformers received and reaffirmed the patristic and medieval consensus.

Other important Reformation-era theologians confirmed this consensus. Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560), Luther's closest collaborator, affirmed body-soul dualism in his Loci Communes. Martin Bucer (1491–1551) and Heinrich Bullinger (1504–1575) likewise held to the traditional view. Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531), though he had a somewhat different approach to the Eucharist and to Christology, still affirmed the body-soul composition of human nature and of Christ's human nature in particular. The Reformation was a united front on this point.¹⁷

Post-Reformation Scholasticism: The Confessional Standards

In the generations following the Reformation, both the Reformed and Lutheran traditions developed more precise and detailed theological systems. This period, often called "Protestant scholasticism" or "Reformed orthodoxy," produced some of the most careful and comprehensive theological works in Christian history. And once again, every major figure in this period affirmed the body-soul composition of human nature and of Christ's human nature.

The Reformed Orthodox Tradition

Francis Turretin (1623–1687), one of the greatest Reformed scholastic theologians, provided an extensive and rigorous treatment of the soul in his Institutes of Elenctic Theology. Turretin argued that the soul and body are independent in operation and being. Because mode of operation follows mode of being, and because the soul's primary activity is spiritual and incorporeal while the body's activity is earthly and corporeal, the soul and body must be separable at death. In that separation, the soul continues its existence after the destruction of the body, and it returns to God until the resurrection of the body.¹⁸

Turretin also applied this anthropology directly to Christology. He affirmed dyothelitism — the teaching that Christ has two wills, a divine will and a human will (see Chapter 14 for the full treatment). He affirmed the completeness of Christ's human nature, including a rational human soul. And he discussed the intermediate state of Christ's soul during the triduum, affirming that the soul descended to the realm of the dead while the body remained in the tomb.¹⁹

Gisbertus Voetius (1589–1676), another leading Reformed scholastic, likewise affirmed body-soul dualism and applied it to Christology. The Dutch Reformed tradition in general was firmly committed to the view that human beings consist of body and soul, and that Christ assumed both in the Incarnation.

Geerhardus Vos (1862–1949), who brought the Reformed orthodox tradition into the twentieth century, taught with characteristic clarity that Scripture presents the human being as a two-part constitution of an immaterial soul and a material body that remain distinct substances while forming a life-unity.²⁰

The Lutheran Orthodox Tradition

The Lutheran scholastic tradition was equally committed to body-soul dualism and to the completeness of Christ's human nature. Johann Gerhard (1582–1637), widely regarded as the greatest of the Lutheran dogmaticians, devoted extensive attention to anthropology and Christology in his monumental Loci Theologici. Gerhard affirmed that the human being is composed of body and soul, and that Christ assumed a complete human nature — body and soul — in the Incarnation.²¹

Martin Chemnitz (1522–1586), one of the most important second-generation Lutheran theologians, wrote an influential treatment of the two natures of Christ in his De Duabus Naturis in Christo (1570). Chemnitz affirmed the full Chalcedonian framework, including Christ's possession of a human rational soul. He discussed the communication of attributes at length, and his entire treatment presupposed the completeness of Christ's human nature as body and soul.²²

The Confessional Documents

The confessional standards of both the Reformed and Lutheran traditions formally codified the consensus on body-soul dualism and on the completeness of Christ's human nature. Let me highlight several of the most important documents.

The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), the foundational confessional document of the Presbyterian tradition, states in Chapter 32:

The bodies of men, after death, return to dust, and see corruption; but their souls (which neither die nor sleep), having an immortal subsistence, immediately return to God who gave them.... At the last day, such as are found alive shall not die, but be changed; and all the dead shall be raised up with the self-same bodies, and none other, although with different qualities, which shall be united again to their souls forever.²³

Notice the explicit anthropological dualism: bodies return to dust, but souls continue to exist. The souls "neither die nor sleep" — a clear rejection of both physicalism (which would have the soul cease to exist at death) and soul sleep (which would have the soul unconscious). And at the resurrection, the bodies are "united again to their souls forever." The Westminster Confession assumes and affirms that human beings are composed of body and soul, and that the two can be separated at death and reunited at the resurrection.

The Westminster Larger Catechism, Question 37, asks: "How did Christ, being the Son of God, become man?" The answer: "Christ the Son of God became man, by taking to himself a true body and a reasonable soul, being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost in the womb of the virgin Mary, of her substance, and born of her, yet without sin." Here is explicit confessional language: Christ took "a true body and a reasonable soul." The phrase "reasonable soul" (or "rational soul") is the same language used by the Council of Chalcedon. The Westminster Standards deliberately echo the conciliar formulation.²⁴

The Belgic Confession (1561), Article 18, states of the Incarnation: "He assumed the very nature of man... a real human body.... He took upon himself the form of a man and the nature of man and assumed a real human body." And Article 19 affirms the union of the two natures in one Person — "yet that each nature retains its own distinct properties." While the Belgic Confession does not use the explicit term "rational soul," its affirmation of "the very nature of man" and a "real human nature" is understood within the Reformed tradition to include the soul, since a human nature without a soul is not a complete human nature.²⁵

The Heidelberg Catechism (1563), Question and Answer 57, asks about the comfort of "the resurrection of the body" and answers: "Not only will my soul be taken immediately after this life to Christ its head, but even my flesh, raised by the power of Christ, will be reunited with my soul and made like Christ's glorious body."²⁶ Again, explicit body-soul dualism: the soul is "taken immediately" to Christ at death (conscious intermediate state), and the body is later "reunited with my soul" at the resurrection.

On the Lutheran side, the Formula of Concord (1577) affirms the two natures of Christ at length, following the Chalcedonian definition. The Augsburg Confession (1530), Article III, states that the Son of God "assumed human nature" — which, in the context of the entire Lutheran dogmatic tradition, was always understood to include both body and soul.²⁷

The evidence is overwhelming. From the medieval period through the Reformation and into the post-Reformation scholastic era, every major theologian and every major confessional document affirmed that human beings are composed of body and soul, and that Christ assumed a complete human nature including a genuine human soul. The tradition is unbroken. The consensus is unanimous. There is not a single dissenting voice.

The Enlightenment Challenge: Philosophical Materialism and the Persistence of Theological Dualism

The Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries brought new challenges to the Christian worldview on many fronts. Among the most significant was the rise of philosophical materialism — the view that reality consists entirely of matter in motion, and that there is no such thing as an immaterial soul, mind, or spirit.

Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) was one of the earliest and most influential materialists of the modern period. In his Leviathan (1651), Hobbes argued that everything that exists is corporeal — made of matter. The mind, the will, and the emotions are all products of physical processes in the body. There is no immaterial soul. Hobbes even applied this materialism to theology, arguing that God Himself is a corporeal being (a view that was widely rejected by other Christian thinkers).²⁸

Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709–1751) pushed materialism even further in his notorious work L'Homme Machine (Man a Machine, 1747), arguing that the human being is nothing more than a complex machine. Mental life — thought, feeling, desire — is entirely a product of the mechanical operations of the body. La Mettrie explicitly denied the existence of the soul and saw no need for any immaterial principle to explain human behavior.²⁹

These philosophical developments were significant, and they would eventually influence the rise of Christian physicalism in the twentieth century. But it is crucial to note that during the Enlightenment period itself, Christian theology did not adopt materialism. The materialist challenge was recognized and rejected by the major theologians of the era. Christian thinkers — both Protestant and Catholic — continued to affirm body-soul dualism and the completeness of Christ's human nature with a rational soul.

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758), the greatest American theologian of the eighteenth century, held firmly to substance dualism. Edwards's theology of the soul was deeply influenced by both Scripture and the Christian philosophical tradition. He affirmed that the soul is an immaterial substance, that it survives the death of the body, and that it is conscious in the intermediate state. Edwards's Christology was fully Chalcedonian, affirming both the deity and the full humanity of Christ — a humanity that includes a genuine human soul.³⁰

John Wesley (1703–1791), the founder of Methodism, also affirmed body-soul dualism. Wesley's theology was focused on practical holiness and the transformation of the heart — and his understanding of the "heart" was thoroughly dualist. The inner transformation that Wesley preached was a transformation of the soul, not merely a rearrangement of brain chemistry. Wesley's Christology was orthodox and Chalcedonian, affirming that Christ assumed a complete human nature.³¹

The point is this: although philosophical materialism gained ground in Enlightenment philosophy, it did not penetrate Christian theology during this period. The theologians were aware of the materialist challenge, and they resisted it. Body-soul dualism remained the standard Christian position. Christological dualism — the affirmation that Christ has a human body and a human soul — remained unchallenged within the church.

The Nineteenth Century: Liberal Theology and the Persistence of the Anthropological Consensus

The nineteenth century brought new challenges to Christian theology, particularly from the rise of liberal Protestantism. Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), often called the "father of liberal theology," shifted the center of theology from revelation and doctrine to religious experience and feeling. Albrecht Ritschl (1822–1889) emphasized the ethical dimensions of Christianity. Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930) attempted to strip Christianity of its "Greek metaphysical" elements and recover the "simple gospel of Jesus."

These liberal theologians challenged many traditional Christian doctrines — the Trinity, the Incarnation, the atonement, the resurrection. But interestingly, even the liberal tradition did not produce anything like modern Christian physicalism. Schleiermacher, while he radically reconceived many Christian doctrines, did not argue that human beings are purely physical organisms. Ritschl, while he de-emphasized metaphysics, did not deny the soul. Harnack, while he rejected the Chalcedonian definition as a distortion of the simple gospel, did not argue for a physicalist anthropology.³²

The liberal challenge to traditional Christology came from a different direction entirely — not from denying the soul, but from denying the full deity of Christ or from reconceiving the Incarnation in non-metaphysical terms. The liberals wanted to get rid of the "Greek metaphysics" of Nicaea and Chalcedon, but they did not want to reduce human nature to mere matter. Many of them were influenced by German Idealism, which emphasized the spiritual dimensions of human existence.

One figure from the nineteenth century who does deserve mention in the context of our discussion is Oscar Cullmann (1902–1999), whose influential essay "Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead?" (1956, building on a 1955 Ingersoll Lecture) argued that the New Testament teaches the resurrection of the body, not the immortality of the soul. Cullmann drew a sharp contrast between the Greek philosophical concept of an inherently immortal soul and the biblical concept of resurrection.³³

Cullmann's essay has been enormously influential, and it has been cited by Christian physicalists as support for their view. But we need to be careful here. Cullmann was not arguing that the soul does not exist. He was arguing that the soul is not inherently immortal — that is, the soul does not possess immortality as a natural, built-in property. Immortality is a gift of God, not an intrinsic feature of the soul. This is an important distinction. As we have argued throughout this book, conditional immortality does not require physicalism. A soul can be real, immaterial, and capable of surviving death — and still be dependent on God for its continued existence. The soul's survival of death is not a natural inevitability; it is a divine gift. Cullmann's critique of "inherent immortality" does not require the denial of the soul's existence.³⁴

Nevertheless, Cullmann's essay opened a door. By setting up a sharp contrast between "Greek" immortality and "Hebrew" resurrection, Cullmann inadvertently provided a framework that later thinkers would use to argue that the entire concept of the soul is a Greek import into biblical theology — an argument that, as we discussed in Chapter 3, does not withstand careful biblical examination. The "Hebrew holism" argument — the claim that the Old Testament teaches a monistic view of human nature with no body-soul distinction — would become one of the main supports for Christian physicalism in the late twentieth century. But Cullmann himself did not take this step. He remained within a broadly dualist framework, even while emphasizing the centrality of resurrection.

Karl Barth: An Ambiguous Legacy

No discussion of twentieth-century theology and its relationship to the body-soul debate would be complete without mentioning Karl Barth (1886–1968), widely regarded as the most important theologian of the twentieth century. Barth's relationship to the traditional body-soul framework is complex and has been interpreted in different ways.

In his Church Dogmatics III.2, Barth discussed the constitution of human nature at length. He affirmed that human beings are "embodied souls and ensouled bodies" — a phrase that has been interpreted by some as support for a holistic view that collapses the distinction between body and soul, and by others as a form of holistic dualism that preserves the distinction while emphasizing the integration.³⁵

Barth was suspicious of what he saw as the "Greek" influence on Christian anthropology. He worried that the traditional body-soul distinction had been used to devalue the body and to introduce an alien dualism into Christian thought. But Barth was not a physicalist. He did not deny that there is a dimension of human existence that is not reducible to the physical body. He spoke of the "soul" as the animating and personal dimension of human existence — though he was reluctant to treat it as a "substance" in the traditional metaphysical sense.³⁶

Barth's Christology was robustly orthodox in many respects. He affirmed the full deity and full humanity of Christ, the two natures, the hypostatic union. But his ambiguity on the metaphysics of the soul opened a space that later thinkers would exploit. Christian physicalists have sometimes appealed to Barth's holistic language as a precedent for their own position. But this is a stretch. Barth was not arguing that human beings are purely physical organisms. He was arguing for a holistic understanding of the person that avoids a sharp dichotomy between body and soul — which is closer to what John Cooper has called "holistic dualism" than to physicalism.³⁷

The important point for our purposes is that even Barth — who was more skeptical of traditional metaphysics than most orthodox theologians — did not take the step of denying the immaterial dimension of human existence. That step would have to wait for the late twentieth century.

The Rise of Christian Physicalism: A Late Twentieth-Century Innovation

We have now traced the history of the Christian theological tradition from the medieval period through the Reformation, through post-Reformation scholasticism, through the Enlightenment, through the nineteenth century, and into the twentieth century. At every point, the tradition affirmed — with remarkable unanimity — that human beings are composed of body and soul, and that Christ assumed a complete human nature including a genuine human soul.

And then, in the last decades of the twentieth century, something unprecedented happened. A group of Christian philosophers, biblical scholars, and theologians began to argue that the traditional view was wrong — that human beings are not composed of body and soul at all, but are purely physical organisms. The soul, they claimed, does not exist as a distinct entity. What we call "the soul" is really just the name we give to certain complex functions of the physical body, especially the brain. There is nothing immaterial about human nature. We are physical beings through and through.

This is Christian physicalism. And I want to be very clear about what a dramatic departure it represents. Let me state the point as plainly as I can:

This does not automatically mean that Christian physicalism is wrong. A view can be new and still be true. The Reformers themselves introduced doctrinal innovations that had no patristic precedent (at least in their full developed form). So novelty alone does not refute a position. But the sheer weight of the tradition should give us pause. When every theologian for two millennia has affirmed a doctrine, and when the ecumenical councils have formally defined it, the burden of proof falls very heavily on those who wish to overturn it. As Michael Wilkinson has argued persuasively, when we reverse the relationship between anthropology and Christology — when we let our understanding of human nature be normed by Christology rather than the other way around — we find that the conciliar definition of Christ's human nature as a "rational soul and body" establishes the pattern for understanding human nature as well.³⁸

The Key Figures

Who are the main architects of Christian physicalism? Several figures stand out as particularly important, and I want to introduce each of them so that we can understand what they actually argue and where their motivations come from.

Nancey Murphy is perhaps the most prominent Christian physicalist philosopher. Her 2006 book Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies? is the fullest statement of her position. Murphy argues for what she calls "nonreductive physicalism" — the view that human beings are entirely physical but that mental life is not simply reducible to physics and chemistry. Mental properties are real, but they emerge from and are entirely dependent on the physical substrate. There is no immaterial soul, no distinct substance over and above the body. Murphy argues that the history of theological anthropology has brought us to a "point of decision" between nonreductive physicalism and holistic dualism, and she believes physicalism is the better option.³⁹

Murphy's "nonreductive" qualifier is important. She does not want to say that mental life is unreal or unimportant. She affirms the reality of consciousness, thought, and emotion. She affirms the importance of moral responsibility, free will, and religious experience. She simply denies that these require an immaterial substance. On her view, they are all properties of — or activities of — the physical organism. She speaks of a "spirited body" rather than a "body and spirit" — the spirit is not a separate thing but a way of describing the body's highest capacities.⁴⁰

Murphy's motivations are mixed. She is influenced by neuroscience, which has demonstrated extensive correlations between mental states and brain states. She is influenced by the philosophical tradition of W.V.O. Quine and the move toward naturalism in analytic philosophy. And she is influenced by what she sees as the failure of traditional dualism to account for the mind-body relationship in a scientifically satisfying way. But she also appeals to biblical and theological arguments, particularly the claim that the Old Testament presents a holistic, monistic view of human nature rather than a dualistic one.⁴¹

Joel Green, a New Testament scholar, is the most prominent biblical advocate for Christian physicalism. In his 2008 book Body, Soul, and Human Life: The Nature of Humanity in the Bible, Green argues that the biblical text, when read with the insights of modern neuroscience in view, supports a physicalist understanding of human nature. Green develops what he calls a "neuro-hermeneutic" — a way of reading Scripture that is informed by and responsive to the findings of neuroscience. He argues that the traditional dualistic reading of the Bible is influenced more by Greek philosophy than by the actual content of the biblical text itself.⁴²

Green's work has been particularly influential in undermining confidence in the intermediate state. He argues that the biblical evidence for a conscious existence between death and resurrection is weaker than traditionally assumed, and that the real emphasis in biblical eschatology is on the resurrection of the body rather than on the survival of the soul. Green's approach has been widely adopted in some evangelical circles, particularly among scholars who are sympathetic to conditional immortality.⁴³

Kevin Corcoran is a Christian philosopher who has developed what is known as the "constitution view" of human persons. In his 2006 book Rethinking Human Nature: A Christian Materialist Alternative to the Soul, Corcoran argues that a person is constituted by a body but is not identical to that body — much as a statue is constituted by its clay but is not identical to the clay. This allows Corcoran to say that persons are not reducible to their physical parts (because the person is not identical to the body) while still maintaining that there is no immaterial soul. It is a subtle position, but it remains a form of physicalism: there is no immaterial substance, no soul that can exist apart from the body.⁴⁴

Warren Brown, a neuroscientist at Fuller Theological Seminary, has collaborated with Murphy on several works arguing for a physicalist understanding of human nature that is compatible with Christian faith. Brown and Murphy coauthored Did My Neurons Make Me Do It? (2007), which argues that physicalism can preserve moral responsibility and free will without an immaterial soul. Brown and Brad Strawn also coauthored The Physical Nature of Christian Life (2012), which attempts to reconceive spiritual formation, church life, and Christian practice in physicalist terms.⁴⁵

Lynne Rudder Baker, another Christian philosopher, developed a version of the constitution view in her Persons and Bodies: A Constitution View (2000). Baker argued that personhood is constituted by having a "first-person perspective" — the ability to think of oneself as oneself — and that this capacity is realized in and by the physical body without requiring an immaterial soul. Baker also attempted to address the problem of resurrection within her physicalist framework, arguing that God can ensure personal identity through the resurrection without the need for a soul as a bridge between death and resurrection.⁴⁶

The Influences Behind Christian Physicalism

Where did Christian physicalism come from? Why did it emerge when it did — in the late twentieth century — after nearly two thousand years of unbroken dualist consensus? I think we can identify several key influences that converged to produce this movement.

First, neuroscience. The explosive growth of neuroscience in the second half of the twentieth century demonstrated, with increasing precision, the extensive correlations between mental states and brain states. Damage to specific brain regions produces specific changes in personality, emotion, memory, and cognitive function. Brain imaging technologies showed that every type of mental activity is accompanied by measurable changes in brain activity. For some thinkers, these discoveries seemed to undermine the case for an immaterial soul. If the mind is so closely tied to the brain, why posit an immaterial substance? Why not simply say that the mind is the brain — or at least that the mind is a product of brain activity?⁴⁷

Now, as we argued in Chapter 4, this reasoning is flawed. Correlation is not identity. The fact that mental states correlate with brain states does not prove that mental states are brain states. The radio analogy is helpful here: if you damage a radio, the music changes. Destroy the radio, and the music stops (from the radio). But the music was never produced by the radio — it was produced by a broadcasting station, and the radio was merely the receiver. Similarly, the brain may be the instrument through which the soul interacts with the physical world, and damage to the brain disrupts this interaction without eliminating the soul itself. But for many Christian thinkers who encountered the neuroscience literature, the correlation between brain and mind seemed too tight to allow for a separate soul.

Second, philosophical naturalism. The broader philosophical climate of the late twentieth century was dominated by various forms of naturalism — the view that nature is all there is, and that everything can be explained in terms of natural processes and entities. In this climate, the postulation of immaterial substances — souls, spirits, minds that are not reducible to matter — seemed philosophically disreputable. Even Christian philosophers who did not embrace full-blown naturalism felt the pressure to accommodate their views to the naturalist consensus. Adopting physicalism about human nature was, for some, a way of maintaining intellectual respectability in the broader philosophical community.⁴⁸

Third, the "Hebrew holism" argument. This is the claim that the Old Testament presents a monistic, holistic view of human nature in which there is no body-soul distinction — and that the traditional dualistic reading of the Bible is a later imposition derived from Greek philosophy rather than from the biblical text itself. This argument was developed by several Old Testament scholars in the mid-twentieth century and was picked up and amplified by Green, Murphy, and other Christian physicalists.⁴⁹

As we argued in Chapter 3, this argument is deeply flawed. The Old Testament does present a holistic view of human nature, but holism and dualism are not incompatible. John Cooper has demonstrated persuasively that the Old Testament teaches "holistic dualism" — the view that body and soul are deeply integrated and function as a unity in this life, while being ontologically distinct substances that can be separated at death. The Hebrew words nephesh (נֶפֶשׁ, often translated "soul") and ruach (רוּחַ, often translated "spirit") are used in ways that clearly presuppose a dimension of human existence that is distinct from the physical body (see Chapter 3 for the full biblical argument).⁵⁰

Moreover, the "Greek philosophy" objection commits a genetic fallacy — the error of rejecting a belief based on its alleged origin rather than on its truth. Even if body-soul dualism had originated in Greek philosophy (which is debatable), that would not make it false. The question is not where a belief came from, but whether it is true. And as we have seen, the biblical evidence for body-soul dualism is strong, regardless of what any Greek philosopher may have thought.⁵¹

Fourth, the conditional immortality movement. The growing acceptance of conditional immortality (annihilationism) among evangelical Christians in the late twentieth century created a natural affinity with physicalism. If immortality is not an inherent property of the soul — if the soul is not naturally immortal — then some thinkers reasoned that perhaps the soul does not exist at all. Physicalism seemed to provide a natural framework for conditional immortality: if there is no soul, then death is the end of the person's existence; and resurrection is God's re-creation of the person in a new body. This framework neatly avoids the traditional problem of what happens to the soul between death and resurrection — because there is no soul.⁵²

As we will argue in Chapter 33, this reasoning is mistaken. Conditional immortality does not require physicalism. A soul can be real, immaterial, and conditionally immortal — dependent on God for its continued existence rather than inherently immortal. The conflation of "conditional immortality" with "no soul" is a conceptual error that has led many in the CI movement into an unnecessary and theologically dangerous embrace of physicalism.

What Christian Physicalism Actually Claims

Let me summarize as clearly as I can what Christian physicalists actually teach about human nature and about Christ. Although there are differences among the various physicalist thinkers, they share several core commitments:

On human nature: There is no immaterial soul. Human beings are entirely physical organisms. What we call "the mind," "consciousness," "the soul," or "the spirit" is not a distinct substance but a set of capacities, functions, or properties that emerge from the physical body — especially the brain. These capacities are real and important, but they are not ontologically distinct from the physical.

On death: When the body dies, the person ceases to exist (on most physicalist accounts). There is no soul to survive the death of the body. The person does not continue to exist in any form between death and resurrection. The intermediate state — the traditional doctrine that the soul is conscious and with Christ between death and the final resurrection — is either denied or radically reinterpreted.

On resurrection: Resurrection is God's re-creation of the entire person — body and all — at the last day. There is no soul that "returns to" the body. Rather, God creates a new body (or transforms the old one) and thereby brings the person back into existence. The key philosophical challenge here is personal identity: if the person ceased to exist at death and a new body is created at the resurrection, is the risen person the same person who died, or a replica? (See Chapter 24 for the full treatment of this problem.)

On Christ: Christian physicalists have generally not addressed the Christological implications of their anthropology in great detail. This is, I believe, one of the most significant gaps in the physicalist literature. When physicalism is applied to Christ, the results are devastating — as we have demonstrated throughout Part V of this book. If Christ has no immaterial human soul, then: the hypostatic union is dissolved at the cross (Chapter 21); the Incarnation is interrupted during the triduum (Chapter 22); the descent to the dead is impossible (Chapter 23); personal identity is threatened at the resurrection (Chapter 24); Christ's sinlessness becomes either inexplicable or Pelagian (Chapter 27); and the parallel with Apollinarianism becomes unmistakable (Chapter 12).

The silence of many Christian physicalists on these Christological questions is telling. Murphy, Green, and Corcoran have focused primarily on anthropology — on what human beings are — and have not adequately addressed what their views imply for the human nature of Christ. The editors of Christian Physicalism?, R. Keith Loftin and Joshua Farris, have rightly pointed out that this silence is not an option. If your anthropology has implications for Christology — and it does — then those implications must be faced honestly.⁵³

The Critique: Why Novelty Matters — and Why It Does Not

I want to be fair. As I noted earlier, the mere fact that Christian physicalism is new does not prove that it is wrong. Christianity has always been open to doctrinal development. The church's understanding of many doctrines — the Trinity, the Incarnation, the atonement, justification — has deepened and been refined over the centuries. New insights are not automatically suspect.

But there is a crucial difference between legitimate doctrinal development and doctrinal reversal. Legitimate development builds on and clarifies what the tradition has always affirmed. The Nicene definition of Christ's homoousios (consubstantial) with the Father was a development — it used a new technical term to express what the church had always believed about Christ's deity. The Chalcedonian definition of the two natures was a development — it clarified the relationship between Christ's deity and humanity in a way that resolved earlier ambiguities. These developments deepened the tradition. They did not contradict it.

Christian physicalism, by contrast, is not a development of the tradition. It is a reversal. It does not deepen or clarify the traditional view of human nature. It denies it. The entire tradition — patristic, medieval, Reformation, post-Reformation — has affirmed that human beings have immaterial souls and that Christ assumed a human soul. Physicalism says the soul does not exist. This is not development. This is contradiction.

And when the contradiction touches a point that has been formally defined by the ecumenical councils, the stakes are even higher. The Council of Chalcedon (451) defined Christ as "truly man of a rational soul and a body." The Second Council of Constantinople (553) condemned the denial of Christ's human rational soul with explicit anathemas. These are not recommendations. They are definitions. They carry the authority of the universal church gathered in council. To deny what the councils have affirmed is to place oneself outside the bounds of orthodox Christology.

As Timothy Pawl has demonstrated in his rigorous defense of conciliar Christology, the definitions of the ecumenical councils are not merely historical artifacts. They are binding expressions of Christian truth, developed through careful theological reasoning and guided (as the church confesses) by the Holy Spirit. To set aside a conciliar definition requires extraordinary justification. And the case for physicalism, as we have seen throughout this book, does not provide that justification.⁵⁴

Physicalism and the Apollinarian Parallel

One of the most important arguments against Christian physicalism — and one that connects directly to the historical material we have surveyed in this chapter and the previous two — is the parallel between physicalism and Apollinarianism.

As we discussed in detail in Chapter 12 and Chapter 31, Apollinarius of Laodicea (ca. 310–390) denied that Christ possesses a human rational soul (nous). He argued that the divine Logos took the place of the human mind in Christ. The church condemned this view repeatedly — at the Council of Constantinople I (381), at the Council of Ephesus (431), at the Council of Chalcedon (451), and at the Second Council of Constantinople (553). The reason for the condemnation was clear: if Christ does not have a human rational soul, He does not have a complete human nature, and He cannot save the human soul. "What is not assumed is not healed" (Gregory of Nazianzus, Epistle 101).

Now, Christian physicalism does not deny Christ's human soul in the same way that Apollinarius did. Apollinarius specifically denied the human nous while affirming a lower "animal soul." Physicalism, by contrast, denies that any soul exists — for Christ or for anyone else. But the Christological result is the same: on both views, Christ does not possess an immaterial human soul. And the theological consequences are the same: Christ's human nature is incomplete, the hypostatic union is compromised at death, and the soteriological logic of the Incarnation is undermined.

As Loftin and Farris observe in Christian Physicalism?, the councils did not merely condemn one particular way of denying Christ's human soul. They condemned any denial of Christ's human soul. The anathemas are directed against the result — Christ lacking a human rational soul — not merely against the specific Apollinarian mechanism for denying it. Whether you deny Christ's soul by replacing it with the Logos (Apollinarianism) or by denying that souls exist at all (physicalism), you arrive at the same condemned position: Christ does not have a complete human nature.⁵⁵

This is a serious charge, and I want to make it carefully and fairly. I do not believe that most Christian physicalists intend to be Apollinarian. Murphy, Green, Corcoran, and the others are sincere Christians who affirm the full deity and full humanity of Christ. They do not consciously deny Christ's human nature. But intentions are one thing, and logical implications are another. If your anthropology requires that there are no immaterial souls, and if the councils define Christ's human nature as including a rational soul, then your anthropology contradicts the councils — regardless of what you intend. The structural logic of physicalism produces the same Christological result that Apollinarianism produced, even if the motivation is entirely different.

A Tradition Worth Defending

Let me step back and reflect on what we have seen in this chapter. We have traced a tradition that stretches across more than a millennium — from the medieval period through the modern era — and we have found a remarkable consistency. Every major theologian in every major tradition affirmed that human beings are composed of body and soul, and that Christ assumed both in the Incarnation.

Thomas Aquinas, the greatest theologian of the medieval period, built his entire Christology on the assumption that Christ's human nature is a composite of body and rational soul. He addressed the triduum mortis — the most challenging test case for any Christological framework — and his solution depended entirely on the reality of Christ's soul as a distinct entity that survived the death of the body.

Martin Luther, the catalyst of the Reformation, affirmed the body-soul composition of human nature and of Christ's human nature without qualification. His theology of the "wondrous exchange" presupposed that Christ assumed everything human — body and soul.

John Calvin, the most systematic of the Reformers, taught explicitly that Christ possesses a human soul, that the soul is an "incorporeal substance," and that the soul survives the death of the body in a conscious intermediate state. His Christology was fully Chalcedonian, and his anthropology was explicitly dualist.

The confessional documents — the Westminster Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgic Confession, the Augsburg Confession, the Formula of Concord — all affirm body-soul dualism and the completeness of Christ's human nature.

The post-Reformation scholastics — Turretin, Gerhard, Chemnitz, and others — developed these commitments with great precision, affirming dyothelitism, the two natures, and the body-soul composition of both human beings and of Christ.

Even during the Enlightenment, when philosophical materialism gained ground outside the church, Christian theology held firm. The great theologians of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries — Edwards, Wesley, and others — continued to affirm body-soul dualism and the completeness of Christ's human nature.

It was not until the very end of the twentieth century that this consensus was challenged from within the Christian community. And the challenge came not from a new reading of Scripture, not from a new theological insight, not from a fresh encounter with the patristic or conciliar tradition. It came primarily from the influence of secular philosophy and neuroscience — from the broader cultural drift toward naturalism that characterized the late modern period.

This does not mean that the scientific findings cited by Christian physicalists are irrelevant. Neuroscience is a legitimate and important field of inquiry. But the philosophical interpretation of neuroscientific data is a separate question from the data itself. The fact that mental states correlate with brain states is a scientific finding. The conclusion that mental states are brain states — that there is no immaterial mind or soul — is a philosophical interpretation, and it is one that is neither required nor supported by the science alone (see Chapter 4).

The Christological Bottom Line

Throughout this book, we have been arguing that the question of human nature is not merely an academic puzzle. It has direct and devastating implications for the doctrine of the Incarnation. And the historical survey we have conducted in this chapter and the previous two confirms this connection.

Every major theologian who has reflected carefully on the Incarnation — from the church fathers through the medieval doctors through the Reformers and beyond — has recognized that Christ's human soul is essential to the Incarnation. Without the soul, Christ's human nature is incomplete. Without the soul, the hypostatic union cannot survive the cross. Without the soul, the descent to the dead is impossible. Without the soul, personal identity is threatened at the resurrection. Without the soul, Christ cannot be our mediator in the fullest sense — because He has not assumed the full reality of what we are.

This is why the tradition is so unanimous. This is why the councils defined Christ's human nature as including a rational soul. This is why every major theologian for nearly two thousand years has affirmed body-soul dualism. It is not because they were all captive to Greek philosophy. It is not because they lacked the scientific knowledge we possess today. It is because they understood what is at stake. They understood that the Incarnation requires a complete human nature, and a complete human nature requires a soul.

Christian physicalism, for all its intellectual sophistication, has not reckoned with this Christological reality. It has focused on anthropology — on the question of what human beings are — without adequately addressing the question of what Christ's human nature must be. And when the Christological implications are drawn out, they are devastating.

As Michael Wilkinson argues in Crowned with Glory and Honor, Christology should norm anthropology, not the other way around. We should not first decide what a human being is (based on our philosophical preferences or our reading of neuroscience) and then apply that conclusion to Christ. Instead, we should look at what Christ's human nature is — as defined by Scripture and the councils — and let that inform our understanding of human nature in general. If Christ's human nature includes a body and a rational soul (as Chalcedon defines), then human nature includes a body and a rational soul. If the councils are right about Christ, then substance dualism is right about us.⁵⁶

Conclusion: An Unbroken Chain and an Unprecedented Break

The story we have told in this chapter is, in one sense, a simple one. For century after century — through the medieval period, the Reformation, the post-Reformation era, the Enlightenment, and into the modern period — the Christian church consistently affirmed that human beings are composed of body and soul, and that Christ assumed both in the Incarnation. The tradition was unbroken. The consensus was unanimous. The voice of the church was clear.

Then, in the closing decades of the twentieth century, a small group of Christian thinkers proposed something radically different. Influenced by neuroscience, philosophical naturalism, and the "Hebrew holism" argument, they argued that human beings are purely physical organisms with no immaterial soul. This is Christian physicalism, and it represents an unprecedented break with the entire prior tradition.

I do not question the sincerity or the Christian commitment of these thinkers. They believe they are being faithful to Scripture and to the best available science. But I do question their conclusion — and I do so on the basis of the very tradition they are departing from, the biblical evidence they are misreading (see Chapter 3), the philosophical arguments they are underestimating (see Chapter 4), and above all, the Christological implications they are not adequately facing (see Chapters 20–29).

The church fathers got it right. The councils got it right. Aquinas got it right. Luther and Calvin got it right. The Westminster divines got it right. Christ possesses a genuine human soul. Human beings are composed of body and soul. And physicalism — however sophisticated, however well-intentioned — is incompatible with the Christ of the councils, the Christ of the Scriptures, and the Christ of the Christian faith.

In the next chapter, we will turn our attention specifically to the relationship between physicalism and the conditional immortality movement — a relationship that has become increasingly significant in recent years. Many in the CI movement have embraced physicalism as their preferred anthropology, and we will examine why this alliance is both unnecessary and theologically dangerous. Conditional immortality does not require physicalism, and the Christological cost of physicalism is one that no faithful conditionalist should be willing to pay.

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