Chapter 35

Answering Physicalist Objections — Common Responses and Why They Fail

Introduction: Why Objections Deserve Honest Answers

Throughout this book, we have built a case — from Scripture, from philosophy, from the evidence of near-death experiences, from the history of the church, and most decisively from the doctrine of the Incarnation — that substance dualism is true and that physicalism about human nature is deeply incompatible with orthodox Christian theology. We have argued that the human person is composed of both a material body and an immaterial soul, that this soul survives the death of the body, and that Christ Himself assumed a complete human nature — body and soul — in the Incarnation. We have shown that physicalism, the view that a human being is nothing more than a physical organism with no immaterial soul, creates devastating problems for Christology, especially during the triduum mortis — the three days between Christ's death and resurrection (see Chapters 21–22).

But fairness demands that we hear the other side. Christian physicalists are not fools. They are thoughtful, often brilliant scholars who believe they can answer every objection we have raised. They have developed sophisticated strategies for preserving what they see as orthodox Christology within a physicalist framework, and they have mounted their own objections against dualism. If our case is strong, it should be able to withstand their best arguments. If their responses succeed, we should be honest enough to admit it.

So in this chapter, I want to do something important: I want to give physicalist objections the fairest hearing I possibly can. I want to state each objection in its strongest form — what philosophers call "steel-manning" the opponent's position. Then I want to explain, carefully and respectfully, why I believe each response ultimately fails. My goal is not to score debating points. My goal is truth. And I am confident that when we examine these eight major physicalist objections honestly and thoroughly, we will find that none of them resolves the fundamental incompatibility between physicalism and the Incarnation.¹

The eight objections we will consider fall into two broad categories. The first four are objections against dualism — arguments that try to show that belief in the soul is mistaken. The last four are attempts to preserve the Incarnation on physicalism — strategies designed to show that physicalism can account for what happened to Christ between His death and resurrection. Both categories deserve careful attention.

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

The Physicalist Argument — Stated Fairly

This is probably the most common objection raised against dualism in contemporary biblical scholarship. The argument goes something like this: Modern biblical scholars have shown that the ancient Hebrews did not think of human beings as composed of two separate substances — a body and a soul — the way that Greek philosophers like Plato did. Instead, the Old Testament presents a thoroughly holistic picture of human nature. The Hebrew word nephesh (נֶפֶשׁ) does not mean "soul" in the sense of an immaterial substance that can exist apart from the body. It means "living being," "person," "self," or even "throat" or "appetite." When Genesis 2:7 says that God breathed into Adam and he became a "living nephesh," it does not mean that God inserted a soul into a body. It means that the whole person — the entire living creature — came into being. Similarly, the New Testament word psychē (ψυχή) is often better translated as "life" or "self" rather than "soul."²

Scholars like Joel Green have argued that biblical anthropology is fundamentally about the whole person. The Bible does not divide people into parts. When the psalmist says "my soul thirsts for God" (Ps 42:2), he does not mean that one part of him — an invisible, detachable component — is thirsty. He means that he, as a whole person, thirsts for God. The language of "soul" in Scripture is about the whole person considered from a particular perspective — the perspective of inner life, desire, or relation to God — not about a separable metaphysical component.³

This is a genuinely important observation. We should take it seriously. The Bible does indeed present human beings as integrated wholes. The Hebrews did not think of the body as a prison for the soul, the way some Greek thinkers did. The biblical vision is deeply, richly, wonderfully holistic. Physical life matters. The body matters. Resurrection — not escape from the body — is the ultimate Christian hope.

Why This Objection Fails

Here is the problem: holism and dualism are not opposites. They are compatible. You can believe that body and soul are deeply integrated — that they belong together, that they function as a unity, that disembodiment is an unnatural and diminished state — while also believing that they are ontologically distinct. That is exactly what the Christian tradition has taught for nearly two thousand years. And it is exactly what the Bible teaches.

John W. Cooper coined the term "holistic dualism" to describe precisely this view. As Cooper argues, the Bible teaches both a functional holism — body and soul are deeply integrated and work together as a unity during earthly life — and an ontological duality — the soul is a distinct reality that can survive the death of the body.⁴ Cooper is worth quoting at length on this point. He writes that "asserting only that biblical anthropology is dualistic is a half-truth which distorts the scriptural picture of human nature. But so is the unqualified claim that it is holistic. Only some combination like 'holistic dualism' will tell the whole story."⁵

The physicalist argument confuses two different questions. The first question is: Are body and soul deeply integrated during earthly life? The answer is yes, and dualists have always said yes. The second question is: Are body and soul ontologically distinct — that is, can the soul exist apart from the body? The answer to this question is also yes, and this is where physicalism and dualism part company. The holism of Scripture does not answer the second question in the negative. In fact, the Bible provides strong evidence that the answer is affirmative.

Consider the intermediate state — the period between a believer's death and the future resurrection. As we argued in Chapter 3, numerous biblical texts teach that believers exist consciously in fellowship with Christ between death and resurrection. Paul says that to be "away from the body" is to be "at home with the Lord" (2 Cor 5:8). Jesus told the thief on the cross, "Today you will be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:43). The parable of the rich man and Lazarus depicts conscious existence after death (Luke 16:19–31). Moses and Elijah appeared at the Transfiguration, centuries after their earthly deaths, conscious and communicating (Matt 17:1–8). If persons can exist apart from their bodies — even temporarily, even in a diminished state — then human nature must include something that is not identical to the body.⁶

Cooper puts the logical point beautifully: "If I am with Christ, then I — my essential selfhood or core personhood — must survive physical death. The being or entity who I am must continue to exist."⁷ This is simply what the intermediate state entails. If you affirm the intermediate state — and the vast majority of Christians throughout history have affirmed it — then you are committed to some form of dualism, whether you like the word or not.

Furthermore, as Joshua Farris has pointed out, contemporary substance dualists do not deny the functional integrity of the soul-body union. Most modern dualists affirm that humans are normally and naturally embodied beings, and that the soul is limited and diminished in its powers during the disembodied interim state.⁸ The dualist is not claiming that the soul is a self-contained entity that merely happens to be stuck in a body. The dualist is claiming that the soul and the body belong together — but that they are distinct realities that can be separated, even though such separation is abnormal and temporary.

So the physicalist's first objection fails — not because it is wrong about holism, but because it is wrong to think that holism rules out dualism. The two are friends, not enemies.

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

The Physicalist Argument — Stated Fairly

This objection has a long pedigree and carries real emotional force, especially among evangelicals who care deeply about being "biblical." The argument goes like this: the idea that human beings are composed of an immaterial soul trapped in a material body comes from Plato and Greek philosophy, not from the Bible. Early church fathers like Origen and Augustine were heavily influenced by Platonic thought, and they read these Greek ideas into the biblical text. What the Bible actually teaches — when read in its own historical and literary context, free from the distorting lens of Greek metaphysics — is that human beings are integrated physical-spiritual wholes, not immortal souls imprisoned in expendable bodies. Dualism, on this telling, is the result of Christianity's unfortunate entanglement with pagan philosophy.⁹

Oscar Cullmann's famous 1956 essay, "Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Body?," did much to popularize this view. Cullmann drew a sharp contrast between the Greek idea of the soul's immortality and the biblical hope of bodily resurrection, arguing that the two are fundamentally incompatible. On Cullmann's reading, Socrates died peacefully because he believed his soul was about to be liberated from the prison of the body. Jesus, by contrast, wept and agonized before death because He knew that death is an enemy — a destruction of the whole person — not a liberation. Cullmann concluded that the idea of an immortal soul is a Greek intrusion into Christian thought.¹⁰

Nancey Murphy, one of the most influential contemporary Christian physicalists, has continued this line of argument, claiming that belief in the soul is a holdover from pre-scientific thinking that has been rendered unnecessary by advances in neuroscience.¹¹

Why This Objection Fails

This objection commits a well-known logical fallacy: the genetic fallacy. The genetic fallacy is the error of evaluating a belief based on where it came from rather than whether it is true. Even if dualism had its origins entirely in Greek philosophy — which, as we shall see, it did not — that would tell us nothing about whether dualism is true. Ideas should be evaluated on their own merits, not dismissed because of their pedigree.

And here is the delicious irony: physicalism also has philosophical roots. Modern physicalism descends from Enlightenment materialism, logical positivism, and the naturalistic philosophy of science. If dualism can be dismissed because Plato held it, then physicalism can be dismissed because Thomas Hobbes, Baron d'Holbach, and the logical positivists held it. The genetic fallacy cuts both ways.¹²

But the deeper problem with this objection is that its historical premise is simply wrong. The Bible teaches body-soul dualism on its own terms, regardless of what the Greeks thought. As we argued at length in Chapter 3, the Old Testament contains numerous passages that distinguish the soul or spirit from the body and depict personal survival of death. Genesis 35:18 describes Rachel's nephesh "departing" at death — language that only makes sense if the nephesh is something that can leave the body. In 1 Kings 17:21–22, Elijah prays that the widow's son's nephesh might return to him, and it does — the boy comes back to life. Ecclesiastes 12:7 says that at death "the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it." These are not Greek ideas imported into Hebrew thought. They are indigenous Israelite beliefs expressed in the Hebrew Bible's own vocabulary.¹³

Jesus Himself taught the distinction between body and soul. In Matthew 10:28, He said, "Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell." This saying makes a clear ontological distinction between sōma (σῶμα, body) and psychē (ψυχή, soul). It teaches that the soul can survive the death of the body — that killing the body does not automatically destroy the soul. This is not Platonism. It is Jesus' own teaching, rooted in His Jewish context and expressed in His own words.¹⁴

Cooper makes this point with admirable clarity: "Personal existence apart from earthly-bodily existence is possible. When we die, there is a dichotomy of ego and the earthly organism. We are constituted in such a way that we can survive 'coming apart' at death." And he insists that this "follows from the teaching of Scripture; it is not a Greek import."¹⁵

Furthermore, as James Barr demonstrated decades ago, the simplistic contrast between "Hebrew holistic thinking" and "Greek dualistic thinking" is itself a caricature of both traditions. Hebrew thought was more diverse than the stereotype suggests, and Greek thought was more diverse than the stereotype suggests. Not all Greek philosophers were Platonic dualists, and not all Hebrew thinkers were monists.¹⁶

So this objection fails on three counts: it commits the genetic fallacy; it misrepresents the biblical evidence; and it relies on an oversimplified contrast between "Hebrew" and "Greek" thought that does not survive careful historical analysis.

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

The Physicalist Argument — Stated Fairly

Of all the objections against dualism, this one carries the most cultural authority in our scientific age. And it deserves to be heard in its strongest form. The argument goes like this: Modern neuroscience has demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that every aspect of our mental life — our thoughts, emotions, memories, personality traits, moral intuitions, even our religious experiences — is correlated with and dependent upon specific physical processes in the brain. Damage to the prefrontal cortex alters personality and moral reasoning. Lesions in the hippocampus destroy the ability to form new memories. Stimulation of the temporal lobe can produce religious experiences. Drugs that alter brain chemistry alter mood, perception, and thought. Alzheimer's disease progressively destroys memory, personality, and self-awareness as it destroys brain tissue. If the soul were the true seat of consciousness, why would brain damage affect consciousness so profoundly?¹⁷

Nancey Murphy has pressed this argument forcefully. She contends that "advances in science make it a view with little justification" to posit a soul, because neuroscience now provides physical accounts of all the specific faculties once attributed to the soul — memory, emotion, reasoning, moral judgment, even religious awareness. There is no "explanatory gap" that the soul is needed to fill.¹⁸

This is a serious argument. We should not dismiss it casually. The correlations between brain states and mental states are real, well-documented, and deeply impressive. Any honest dualist must take them seriously.

Why This Objection Fails

The objection fails because it confuses dependence with identity. The fact that mental states depend on the brain during embodied life does not prove that mental states are brain states. Correlation is not causation. Or more precisely in this case: correlation is not identity.

Consider the radio analogy, which several philosophers have used. A radio depends on its antenna, its circuitry, and its speaker to produce sound. Damage the antenna and the reception gets distorted. Smash the speaker and you hear nothing. Does this prove that the music is the radio? Of course not. The music — the signal — exists independently of any particular radio. The radio is the instrument through which the signal is received and expressed, but the signal is not identical to the instrument. Similarly, the brain may be the instrument through which the soul interacts with the physical world. Damage the brain and the soul's expression is impaired — but the soul itself may persist.¹⁹

Now, I should be honest: the radio analogy has limits. It is an illustration, not a proof. But the point it makes is logically sound. The neuroscientific evidence establishes that mental life depends on the brain during earthly life. It does not establish that mental life is identical to brain activity. Those are very different claims, and the physicalist's move from the first to the second involves a logical leap that is not warranted by the evidence.

C. Stephen Evans has made this point sharply in response to Murphy's argument about localized brain functions. As Evans notes, dualists have never claimed that the soul operates independently of the brain during earthly life. Of course the soul uses the brain. Of course damage to the brain impairs the soul's functioning. That is exactly what we would expect if the soul is the agent and the brain is its instrument.²⁰

As John Tyndall observed as early as 1886, even if we could correlate every conscious experience with a specific molecular motion in the brain, the question of why that motion produces that experience would remain completely unanswered. The explanatory gap between physical processes and subjective experience — what David Chalmers has famously called the "hard problem of consciousness" — has not been narrowed one inch by neuroscience. We know that brain states correlate with mental states. We have no idea why they do. The physical world, described in the language of physics and chemistry, contains nothing that would lead us to predict the existence of subjective experience. Yet subjective experience is the most certain thing we know.²¹

And here is where the evidence of near-death experiences becomes directly relevant. As we argued in Chapter 5, there are well-documented cases where individuals have reported detailed, accurate perceptions during periods when their brains were severely impaired or clinically nonfunctional. Patients who were in cardiac arrest — with no measurable brain activity — have reported veridical (verifiable and accurate) observations of events occurring in the operating room and beyond. If consciousness were identical to brain activity, such experiences would be impossible. The fact that they occur is powerful evidence that consciousness can function independently of the brain — exactly what dualism predicts and exactly what physicalism cannot account for.²²

Finally, we should note the irony of Murphy's position. She argues that the soul is unnecessary because neuroscience explains everything the soul was supposed to explain. But as the contributors to Christian Physicalism? have pointed out, if immaterial divine agency is not problematic for the Christian physicalist — and it cannot be, since Christianity requires belief in an immaterial God who acts in the physical world — then why is immaterial human agency considered so problematic? If God, who is immaterial, can causally interact with the physical world, then the idea that an immaterial soul can interact with a physical brain should not be considered inherently absurd.²³

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

The Physicalist Argument — Stated Fairly

This objection addresses the most devastating argument we have raised against physicalism: the triduum mortis problem. As we argued at length in Chapter 21, if physicalism is true, then when Christ died on the cross, His human nature — which on physicalism is identical to His physical organism — ceased to exist as a living being. There was no immaterial soul to survive the death of the body. For approximately thirty-six to forty hours, the Son of God was not united to a living human nature. The Incarnation was interrupted. The Chalcedonian affirmation that the two natures are united "without separation" — achōristōs (ἀχωρίστως) — was violated.

Some physicalists have responded to this problem by appealing to divine reconstitution. The argument goes like this: Yes, on physicalism, the human person ceases to exist at death. But God can miraculously reconstitute the same person at the resurrection. God does not merely create a copy of the person; He recreates the same person — the numerically identical individual — by His almighty power. Just as God created human life in the first place, He can recreate it. And if God can do this for ordinary humans at the general resurrection, He can certainly do it for Christ at Easter. So there is no permanent loss of the Incarnation — only a temporary interruption, followed by a divine reconstitution of Christ's human nature at the resurrection.²⁴

Some versions of this argument appeal to God's ability to preserve the "information" or "pattern" of the person even when the physical substrate is destroyed. John Polkinghorne, for instance, has suggested that God preserves the "information-bearing pattern" of each person and uses that pattern to reconstitute them at the resurrection.²⁵

Why This Objection Fails

This response fails for several reasons, each of which is decisive on its own.

First, there is what we might call the "gap" problem. Even if divine reconstitution succeeds perfectly — even if the risen Christ is numerically identical to the crucified Christ — there is still a gap. There is a period between Good Friday and Easter Sunday during which, on physicalism, the Son of God was not incarnate. He existed — He is God, and God does not cease to exist — but He was not united to a human nature. He was not "true God and true man." For thirty-six to forty hours, the Second Person of the Trinity was disincarnate.

This is not a minor theological quibble. It is a fundamental compromise of the central Christian doctrine. The Definition of Chalcedon (AD 451) confesses that Christ's two natures are united "without confusion, without change, without division, without separation." The phrase "without separation" — achōristōs (ἀχωρίστως) — means that the union of the two natures is permanent and unbreakable. It does not admit exceptions, pauses, or intermissions. If the Incarnation was interrupted for even a nanosecond, Chalcedon's "without separation" was violated.²⁶

Duration is irrelevant to this argument. Some physicalists try to soften the problem by pointing out that the triduum was brief — only a day and a half. But the issue is not how long the interruption lasted. The issue is whether the Incarnation was continuous or not. If it was interrupted at all, then the union of the two natures was separable. And if it was separable, then Chalcedon was wrong. A marriage that is dissolved for only one day is still a dissolved marriage during that day.

Second, divine reconstitution does not solve the triduum problem — it merely postpones it. Even if the risen Christ is the same person as the crucified Christ, this does not change the fact that during Holy Saturday, the Son was not incarnate. What matters for Christology is not just what happened after the resurrection but what was happening during the triduum. Was the Son incarnate during those hours? On physicalism, the answer is no. And no amount of reconstitution afterward can retroactively fill that gap.²⁷

Third, reconstitution faces a severe personal identity problem, which we examined in detail in Chapter 24. If a person ceases to exist entirely at death and a new person is created at the resurrection — even if this new person has the same memories, the same personality, the same physical structure — is it really the same person? Or is it a replica? This is the famous "replica problem." On dualism, the problem does not arise because the soul provides continuity of identity through the triduum. The soul that separated from Christ's body at death was the same soul that was reunited with His body at the resurrection. On physicalism, there is no such continuity. The identity claim rests entirely on God's declaration — "this is the same person" — rather than on any ontological continuity in the person herself.²⁸

By contrast, on dualism, none of these problems arise. Christ's human soul separated from His body at death — as happens with all humans. But the Son remained united to both the human soul and the human body. The soul went to paradise or descended to the dead; the body lay in the tomb. Both remained the Son's. The Incarnation continued without interruption through Holy Saturday because the Son was continuously united to His human nature — even in its separated state. The hypostatic union — the union of the divine and human natures in the one Person of the Son — was never broken. Thomas Aquinas made this very argument in the medieval period, and it remains compelling today (see Chapter 32 for a full treatment of Aquinas's position).²⁹

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

The Physicalist Argument — Stated Fairly

Some physicalists have tried a different strategy to address the triduum problem. Rather than appealing to reconstitution at the resurrection, they argue that the Son remained united to Christ's physical body even while it lay in the tomb. The body was dead, yes — but it was still Christ's body. The Person of the Son was still united to it. Just as we say "that is Abraham Lincoln" when we view his body at a funeral, the physicalist can say "that is Christ" when speaking of the body in the tomb. The Incarnation was not interrupted because the Son never ceased to be united to His human nature — His body — even though that body was temporarily dead.³⁰

Glenn Peoples, a Christian physicalist and conditionalist, has argued along similar lines, suggesting that the physicalist need not concede that the Incarnation was broken during the triduum. The Son's union with the human body could persist through death, just as we naturally continue to regard a recently deceased person's body as "their" body.³¹

Why This Objection Fails

The problem with this response is simple and devastating: a corpse is not a human nature. Dead biological matter is not a person. And the hypostatic union is the union of the divine nature with a human nature — not with dead organic tissue.

What is a human nature? It is not merely a collection of carbon atoms, water molecules, and organic compounds arranged in a particular shape. A human nature is a living, functioning reality — a nature that includes consciousness, rationality, will, emotion, and all the capacities that make a being truly human. When the Councils of the church affirmed that Christ has a complete human nature, they meant that He has everything that belongs to genuine humanity: a rational soul, a human will, human emotions, a human mind, and a human body. A corpse has none of these things. A corpse does not think, will, feel, or reason. A corpse is not a person. It is the remains of a person.³²

To say that the Son remained united to a corpse in the tomb and that this counts as "the Incarnation continuing" is to drain the Incarnation of its meaning. The Incarnation is not merely the divine nature being spatially co-located with some human-shaped biological matter. The Incarnation is the divine nature being hypostatically united to a living, complete, functioning human nature. A corpse does not qualify.

Consider what the councils actually taught. The Council of Chalcedon (AD 451) affirmed that Christ is "truly God and truly man, of a rational soul (psychēs logikēs, ψυχῆς λογικῆς) and a body." Notice the formula: "a rational soul and a body." A complete human nature, according to Chalcedon, includes both a rational soul and a body. A body without a rational soul is not a complete human nature. It is just a body — and a dead one at that.³³

The physicalist who argues that the Son remained united to the corpse in the tomb faces an uncomfortable dilemma. Either the corpse counts as a human nature, or it does not. If it does, then a human nature is nothing more than a particular arrangement of physical matter, regardless of whether it is alive or dead — which trivializes the concept of human nature beyond recognition. If it does not — if a corpse is not a human nature — then the Son was not united to a human nature during the triduum, and the Incarnation was broken.

Furthermore, this approach actually has a surprising parallel with the ancient heresy of Apollinarianism, though in reverse. Apollinaris denied that Christ had a human rational soul, teaching instead that the divine Logos replaced the human mind. The church condemned this view precisely because it meant Christ did not assume a complete human nature (see Chapter 31). Gregory of Nazianzus delivered the famous verdict: "What is not assumed is not healed" — to gar aproslepton, atherapeuton (τὸ γὰρ ἀπρόσληπτον, ἀθεράπευτον).³⁴ The physicalist view of the triduum creates a similar problem, though from a different direction. During Holy Saturday, on physicalism, the Son was united to something that was less than a complete human nature — a corpse rather than a living, ensouled human being. And if Christ was not united to a complete human nature during those hours, then our complete human nature was not being healed during those hours. Gregory's principle applies.

The dualist has no such problem. On dualism, the body in the tomb remained the Son's body, and the soul in paradise (or in the descent) remained the Son's soul. Both components of the human nature — body and soul — remained hypostatically united to the divine Person. The human nature was in a separated state, yes — separated as body from soul, as happens to all who die — but it was never separated from the Son. The Incarnation continued.

Objection 6: "Constitution Christology Can Save Physicalism"

The Physicalist Argument — Stated Fairly

Constitution Christology is a sophisticated philosophical model that has been developed by thinkers like Lynne Rudder Baker and Kevin Corcoran. On the constitution view, a human person is not identical to her body but is constituted by her body. The relationship between person and body is analogous to the relationship between a statue and the lump of clay from which it is made. The statue is not identical to the clay — you can destroy the statue (by smashing it) without destroying the clay, and the clay existed before the statue was formed from it. But the statue is made of nothing but the clay. Similarly, on the constitution view, a person is made of nothing but physical matter, yet the person is not identical to that matter. The person has properties — a first-person perspective, a personal history, moral responsibility — that the body, considered merely as an arrangement of matter, does not have.³⁵

Some physicalists have applied this model to Christology. On this view, the Son constitutes the human nature of Christ without being identical to it. The divine Person of the Son takes on a human constitution — a human body organized in the right way — and this constitution relationship is the metaphysical basis of the Incarnation. The advantage, supposedly, is that this preserves the "without confusion" of Chalcedon: the divine nature and the human nature are not mixed or merged, because constitution is not identity. The Son is not identical to the human body; He is constituted by it (or perhaps: the human nature is constituted by the body, and the Son assumes this constituted nature).³⁶

Some constitution theorists — notably Corcoran — have even suggested that at death, a kind of "fission" might occur whereby the earthly body becomes two things: a corpse and a bodily person that could exist in an intermediate state. This would allow the constitution physicalist to maintain personal continuity through death without appealing to an immaterial soul.³⁷

Why This Objection Fails

The constitution view faces several serious problems, and none of its proposed solutions to the triduum crisis is successful.

First, even on the constitution view, the human person ceases to exist at death — unless some exotic rescue mechanism is invoked. Baker herself defines personhood in terms of the capacity for a "first-person perspective."³⁸ When the brain dies, the capacity for a first-person perspective is destroyed. On Baker's own account, the person is therefore destroyed. The constitution relationship between the person and her body is dissolved at death. This means that Christ, considered as a human person constituted by His body, ceased to exist at death. The triduum problem remains in full force.

Second, Corcoran's fission proposal — where the body "splits" at death into a corpse and a surviving bodily person — is an ingenious bit of metaphysical engineering, but it raises more problems than it solves. Where does this surviving bodily person go? What is it made of? If it is made of physical matter, where is that matter located? Is it in some other dimension? And most importantly: does this not amount to a de facto admission that physicalism cannot handle the intermediate state without smuggling in something very much like a soul — a surviving entity that is not the corpse? As Jonathan Loose has argued, the fission model's attempt to preserve physicalism while accounting for postmortem survival ends up being incoherent: it either collapses into a version of dualism or it fails to preserve personal identity.³⁹

Third, the constitution view faces the same personal identity challenge that plagues all physicalist accounts of the resurrection. If the human person is constituted by a particular body, and that body is destroyed at death, then the person is destroyed. Even if God creates a new body at the resurrection, the relationship between the pre-mortem person and the post-mortem person is at best a closest-continuer relationship, not numerical identity. Baker's claim that "sameness of pre- and postmortem person is sameness of first-person perspective" merely moves the problem rather than solving it: what makes it the same first-person perspective rather than a new one that is qualitatively indistinguishable from the old?⁴⁰

When applied to Christ, these problems become especially acute. Was the Christ who rose on Easter Sunday the same person as the Christ who died on Good Friday? On dualism, the answer is an unequivocal yes: the soul that animated Christ's body before death is the same soul that was reunited with His body at the resurrection. On the constitution view, the answer depends on a contested philosophical theory about the persistence of first-person perspectives across a gap of nonexistence — a theory that has not been shown to be coherent.

Luke Van Horn has pressed this point specifically against physicalist Christologies, arguing that physicalism produces a "soulless Savior" who cannot maintain personal identity through death and resurrection in the way that orthodox Christology requires.⁴¹

Fourth, and perhaps most fundamentally, the constitution view of the Incarnation does not actually solve the metaphysical puzzle of how the divine nature and the human nature are united. It replaces the traditional concept of hypostatic union with the concept of constitution, but constitution is a relation between a thing and the matter that makes it up (as a statue is constituted by clay). How does this apply to the Incarnation? Is the divine Person constituted by the human body? That would make the divine Person dependent on the human body for His existence — which is theologically unacceptable. Is the human nature constituted by the body, with the divine Person then assuming this constituted nature? That is closer to the traditional view, but now we are back to asking what "assuming" means, and constitution has not given us a clear answer.⁴²

Objection 7: "Resurrection Immediacy Eliminates the Gap"

The Physicalist Argument — Stated Fairly

Some theologians, recognizing the severity of the triduum problem, have proposed a radical solution: there is no gap because resurrection is immediate. On this view, when a person dies, she is immediately raised — there is no intermediate state, no period of disembodiment, no "waiting" between death and resurrection. For the person who dies, the next conscious moment after death is the resurrection. Time passes for those who remain alive on earth, of course, but for the deceased person, death and resurrection are experientially instantaneous.⁴³

Applied to Christ, this would mean that there was no triduum problem at all. When Christ died on the cross, He was immediately raised. The body in the tomb was a separate matter — perhaps a simulacrum, or perhaps Christ's body was reconstituted at the very moment of death so that the person of Christ never ceased to exist. From Christ's own perspective, there was no gap. He died and immediately was risen. The Incarnation was never interrupted because Christ was never dead in the relevant sense — He passed immediately from death to resurrection life.

Some versions of this view draw on the concept of eternity or divine timelessness. If God exists outside of time, then perhaps the resurrection occurs "simultaneously" with death from God's perspective, even if it appears sequential from our temporal perspective. The "three days" between Friday and Sunday are a temporal interval for us but not for Christ, who experienced no gap in consciousness or existence.⁴⁴

Why This Objection Fails

This response is one of the most creative strategies physicalists have developed, and I appreciate the ingenuity behind it. But it fails decisively, for multiple reasons.

First, it contradicts the biblical narrative. The Gospels are unanimous that Jesus died, His body was placed in a tomb, and He rose on the third day. These are not three ways of describing the same event. They are three sequential events separated by real time. Matthew 27:57–60 describes the burial in detail. Luke 23:54–56 notes that the women observed the tomb and then rested on the Sabbath. Matthew 27:62–66 describes the Pharisees posting a guard at the tomb — a guard that would have been unnecessary if the body had already been raised. The women came to the tomb on Sunday morning expecting to find a corpse (Mark 16:1–3). The body was in the tomb from Friday evening to Sunday morning. These are not metaphors. They are historical facts reported by eyewitnesses.⁴⁵

Second, immediate resurrection eliminates Holy Saturday entirely. And Holy Saturday is not an empty day. As we argued in Chapter 23, the New Testament teaches that Christ was active between His death and resurrection. First Peter 3:18–20 says that Christ was "made alive in the spirit" and "went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison." First Peter 4:6 says "the gospel was preached even to those who are dead." The Apostles' Creed affirms that Christ "descended to the dead" (descendit ad inferos). If Christ was immediately resurrected at death, none of this happened. The descent clause of the creed becomes meaningless. An entire dimension of Christ's saving work — His proclamation to the dead — is simply erased.⁴⁶

Third, immediate resurrection contradicts the creeds. The Apostles' Creed confesses that Christ "was crucified, died, and was buried." The Nicene Creed says He "was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate; he suffered and was buried; and the third day he rose again." These creedal statements affirm a sequence: crucifixion, death, burial, and then resurrection on the third day. The "third day" is not a poetic flourish; it is a temporal marker indicating that the resurrection occurred after a real interval of time. If Christ was immediately resurrected at death, then He was not truly "buried" in any meaningful sense — or rather, what was buried was a leftover body, not the person of Christ. This either contradicts the creed or empties it of its plain meaning.⁴⁷

Fourth, the appeal to divine timelessness does not resolve the problem. Even if God exists outside of time, the events of Christ's life, death, burial, and resurrection occurred within time. The Incarnation itself is the entry of the eternal into the temporal. Whatever is true from "God's perspective," the fact remains that the body of Jesus was in the tomb from Friday to Sunday from the perspective of history — and it is within history that the Incarnation occurs. The triduum is a historical reality, not a perspective-dependent illusion.

Fifth, and perhaps most revealingly, the immediate resurrection strategy actually concedes the dualist's main point. Think about it carefully. Why do physicalists feel the need to propose immediate resurrection? Because they recognize that on physicalism, if Christ is truly dead for any period of time, the Incarnation is broken. The very fact that they feel compelled to eliminate the triduum is an implicit admission that physicalism cannot survive it. The dualist does not need to eliminate the triduum because dualism can handle it: the soul survives, the Incarnation continues, the Person of the Son remains united to both components of His human nature. The physicalist, by contrast, must either deny the triduum or accept that the Incarnation was interrupted. Neither option is satisfactory.

Cooper has assessed the immediate resurrection theory and its implications carefully. As he notes, many proponents of immediate bodily resurrection actually formulate their view in an implicitly dualistic manner — positing some kind of surviving personal entity that receives or inhabits the resurrection body — without recognizing that they have thereby abandoned the monism they officially endorse.⁴⁸

Objection 8: "Dualism Creates Its Own Problems — The Interaction Problem and the Pairing Problem"

The Physicalist Argument — Stated Fairly

Having responded to the first seven objections — four against dualism and three attempting to preserve the Incarnation on physicalism — we come to the final and perhaps most philosophically sophisticated objection. The argument goes like this: Even if physicalism has problems, dualism has problems of its own that are at least as severe. Two problems in particular have been pressed against dualism for centuries.

The first is the interaction problem, which dates back to Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia's famous challenge to Descartes in 1643. If the soul is immaterial and the body is material, how do they interact? How can a non-physical substance cause changes in a physical substance, and vice versa? When I decide to raise my arm, how does my immaterial decision cause my material arm to move? When a physical rock hits my body, how does this physical event cause pain — an experience in my immaterial soul? Causation, the objection claims, requires some kind of mechanism or contact between cause and effect. But an immaterial soul and a material body share no properties in common — they are ontologically different kinds of thing. There is no mechanism by which they could interact.⁴⁹

The second is the pairing problem, developed by Jaegwon Kim. Even if we grant that immaterial substances can cause changes in material substances, how is a particular soul "paired" with a particular body? When my soul causes my arm to move, why does it move my arm rather than your arm? Normally, we individuate causal relations spatially — this event causes that event because they are in spatial proximity. But immaterial substances do not have spatial locations. So there is no spatial relation that could pair my soul with my body rather than with yours. Without a pairing relation, causal interaction between a specific soul and a specific body is mysterious.⁵⁰

Physicalists press these two problems as grounds for rejecting dualism altogether. If dualism cannot explain how body and soul interact, then dualism is at least as problematic as physicalism, and the Christological arguments against physicalism lose their force.

Why This Objection Fails

This is a fair objection, and I want to respond to it honestly. The interaction problem is real. It is a genuine philosophical puzzle. Dualists have grappled with it for centuries and have not produced a universally accepted solution. I do not pretend that it has been fully solved.

But here is the critical point: an unsolved puzzle is not a refutation. The fact that we do not yet fully understand how the soul interacts with the body does not prove that the soul does not interact with the body. We know, from direct first-person experience, that mental causation occurs. I decide to raise my arm, and it raises. I feel pain, and I cry out. The reality of mental-physical interaction is the most obvious fact of our daily experience. Any philosophical theory that denies it is denying what we know most directly and most certainly.⁵¹

Moreover, physicalism has its own unsolved puzzle that is at least as severe: the hard problem of consciousness. How does subjective experience arise from physical matter? How do neuron firings — purely physical events involving the movement of sodium and potassium ions across cell membranes — give rise to the rich, qualitative, first-person experience of seeing a sunset, tasting coffee, or feeling love? David Chalmers has argued convincingly that this is the deepest problem in all of philosophy of mind, and that no physicalist theory has come close to solving it.⁵²

If the dualist's inability to fully explain soul-body interaction counts against dualism, then the physicalist's inability to explain how consciousness arises from matter counts equally against physicalism. Both views face unsolved puzzles. But the dualist's puzzle — how does the soul interact with the body? — is a puzzle about a mechanism. The physicalist's puzzle — how does consciousness arise from matter? — is a puzzle about existence itself. The dualist knows that interaction occurs and is puzzled about how. The physicalist cannot even explain that consciousness exists. I would argue that the physicalist's puzzle is far more severe.⁵³

As for the pairing problem, it rests on an assumption that is questionable: the assumption that causation requires spatial contact or spatial proximity. Kim assumes that causal relations must be individuated spatially — that the reason this cause affects this effect is because they are spatially related. But why should we accept this assumption? It may be true for physical causation, but the dualist is precisely claiming that there is a kind of causation — mental causation — that is not physical. If mental causation exists (and our direct experience tells us it does), then there is no reason to think it must follow the spatial rules that govern physical causation.⁵⁴

Several dualist philosophers have offered responses to the pairing problem. J. P. Moreland has argued that the soul can be "located" in a derivative sense — not by occupying space the way physical objects do, but by having a direct causal relation to a particular body. The soul is "where" its body is, in the sense that it exercises its causal powers through that body. This is not a spatial location in the physical sense, but it is a real relation that pairs this soul with this body.⁵⁵

Richard Swinburne has offered a similar response, arguing that the soul-body relation is a fundamental causal relation that does not need to be reduced to spatial proximity. Just as we accept fundamental physical laws — like the law of gravity — without requiring a further explanation of why gravity works the way it does, we can accept the soul-body causal relation as a fundamental feature of reality without requiring a further explanation of how an immaterial soul causes changes in a material body.⁵⁶

But even if none of these responses fully resolves the pairing problem, the objection still fails to achieve what physicalists need it to achieve. At most, the pairing problem shows that dualism faces an unsolved puzzle. It does not show that dualism is false. And it does not begin to address the devastating Christological problems that physicalism faces — the triduum problem, the descent problem, the personal identity problem, the dissolution of the hypostatic union. Even if the dualist cannot fully explain how the soul interacts with the body, the dualist can explain how the Incarnation survives the cross. The physicalist cannot.

The Cumulative Failure: Why No Combination of Responses Works

We have now examined all eight major physicalist objections and responses, and none of them succeeds. But I want to press the point one step further. Sometimes a collection of partial answers can add up to a complete solution even when no individual answer suffices on its own. Could the physicalist combine several of these strategies — holism, neuroscience, constitution Christology, and perhaps a partial resurrection immediacy — into a cumulative response that succeeds where each individual response fails?

I do not think so, and here is why. The fundamental problem is not a collection of small difficulties that can be patched together. The fundamental problem is a single, structural incompatibility between physicalism and the Incarnation. On physicalism, human nature = physical organism. When a physical organism dies, it ceases to be a living human being. Therefore, on physicalism, when Christ died, His human nature ceased to exist as a living reality. No strategy that accepts these premises can avoid the conclusion. You can call the dead body a "human nature" (but it is not). You can claim the resurrection was immediate (but it was not). You can invoke constitution (but constitution is dissolved at death). You can appeal to divine reconstitution (but the gap remains). Each strategy either denies a clear biblical and historical datum or fails to address the core metaphysical problem.⁵⁷

The only way to avoid the conclusion is to deny one of the premises. And the only premise a Christian can deny is the first one: that human nature = physical organism. If human nature includes an immaterial soul — a soul that can survive the death of the body, that can be the subject of consciousness in the intermediate state, that can maintain the hypostatic union through the triduum — then the Incarnation is preserved. The soul is the key. Without it, the Incarnation collapses at the cross.

A Word About Fairness and Charity

Before we conclude, I want to say something about the spirit in which I have tried to engage with these objections. The physicalist scholars whose arguments we have examined — Murphy, Green, Baker, Corcoran, van Inwagen, Merricks, Peoples, and others — are serious thinkers who deserve respect. Many of them are committed Christians who love the Lord and want to honor Him with their scholarship. I disagree with their conclusions, but I do not question their motives or their faith.

In fact, I think the very fact that they work so hard to reconcile physicalism with orthodox Christology shows that they take the Incarnation seriously. They are not trying to undermine Christian doctrine. They are trying to show that their preferred anthropology is compatible with it. I believe they are wrong about that — the arguments of this book, I am convinced, demonstrate that physicalism and the Incarnation are fundamentally incompatible — but I respect their effort.

At the same time, I want to be clear about what is at stake. This is not a dispute about secondary or tertiary theological matters. This is a dispute about the nature of Christ. If physicalism is true, then the Incarnation was interrupted at the cross, the descent to the dead did not happen, personal identity through death and resurrection is uncertain, and "without separation" was violated. These are not minor problems. They touch the very heart of the gospel: who Jesus is, what He did between Good Friday and Easter, and whether the risen Christ is the same Jesus who died.

I do not say this to be polemical. I say it because the Christological stakes of this debate are often underappreciated. Many Christians adopt physicalism without ever thinking through its implications for the Incarnation. They hear that neuroscience has "disproved" the soul, or that the Bible is "holistic," and they adjust their anthropology accordingly — without realizing that this adjustment has cascading consequences for their Christology. One of the purposes of this chapter — and this entire book — is to help readers see those consequences clearly.⁵⁸

The Positive Case: Why Dualism Succeeds Where Physicalism Fails

Having shown that each physicalist objection fails, let me briefly restate the positive case for dualism — not by repeating the detailed arguments of earlier chapters, but by showing how dualism elegantly resolves every problem that physicalism creates.

On substance dualism, a human being consists of two distinct but deeply integrated components: a material body and an immaterial soul. The soul is directly created by God, is the seat of consciousness, will, rational thought, and personal identity, and can exist and function apart from the body after death — though disembodiment is an unnatural and diminished state that awaits the eschatological remedy of resurrection.⁵⁹

When Christ assumed a human nature in the Incarnation, He assumed both a human body and a human rational soul. This is what the Council of Chalcedon teaches: Christ is "of a rational soul and a body" (ek psychēs logikēs kai sōmatos, ἐκ ψυχῆς λογικῆς καὶ σώματος). This is what the entire patristic tradition insists upon (as we documented in Chapter 30). And this is what makes the Incarnation coherent through every phase of Christ's existence:

During His earthly ministry, Christ's divine nature was united to His complete human nature — body and soul. The soul served as the "meeting point" between the divine and the physical, providing what Andrew Loke has called the metaphysical "point of contact" for the hypostatic union. Christ's human soul was the seat of His genuinely human conscious experience, His human will, His human emotions, and His human knowledge (see Chapter 17 for the kryptic model).⁶⁰

At death, Christ's human soul separated from His body — as happens to all who die. But the Person of the Son remained united to both. The body lay in the tomb; the soul descended to the dead. The hypostatic union was not broken. The Incarnation continued without interruption. The Chalcedonian "without separation" was preserved.

During the triduum, Christ was active. His soul proclaimed the gospel to the spirits in prison (1 Pet 3:18–20). He was in paradise with the repentant thief (Luke 23:43). He was truly dead — His body and soul were separated — but He was not non-existent. He remained the God-man throughout.

At the resurrection, the same soul that had separated from Christ's body at death was reunited with that body — now glorified and transformed. Personal identity was perfectly maintained. There was no gap in existence, no replica problem, no need for divine reconstitution from scratch. The risen Jesus was — and is — the same person as the crucified Jesus, without any question.

At the ascension and beyond, the Incarnation continues permanently. Christ remains God and man forever — seated at the right hand of the Father in His glorified human nature, consisting of both a human body and a human soul, permanently united to His divine nature (see Chapter 26).

Every single one of these affirmations is standard, orthodox, creedal Christology. And every single one of them requires the soul. Without the soul, the Incarnation collapses at the cross, the triduum is a void, the descent to the dead is impossible, personal identity through resurrection is uncertain, and the permanent incarnation is ungrounded. With the soul, every piece falls into place.

Conclusion: The Objections Fail, and the Case Stands

In this chapter, we have examined the eight major physicalist objections and responses to our case for dualism and against physicalism. Let me summarize what we have found:

Objection 1 — "Biblical anthropology is holistic" — fails because holism and dualism are compatible. Holistic dualism faithfully represents the full biblical picture.

Objection 2 — "Dualism is a Greek import" — fails because it commits the genetic fallacy, because physicalism also has philosophical roots, and because the Bible teaches body-soul dualism on its own terms.

Objection 3 — "Neuroscience shows mental life depends on the brain" — fails because dependence is not identity. The hard problem of consciousness remains unsolved. NDE evidence supports the possibility of consciousness functioning independently of the brain.

Objection 4 — "Divine reconstitution preserves the Incarnation" — fails because it does not fill the gap during the triduum. Even if the risen Christ is the same person, there was a period when the Son was not incarnate. The "without separation" of Chalcedon was violated.

Objection 5 — "The Son remained united to the body in the tomb" — fails because a corpse is not a human nature. Dead biological matter is not a person. The hypostatic union requires a living, complete human nature.

Objection 6 — "Constitution Christology saves physicalism" — fails because the constitution relation is dissolved at death. The fission proposal is incoherent. The personal identity problem remains.

Objection 7 — "Resurrection immediacy eliminates the gap" — fails because it contradicts the Gospel accounts of the burial, eliminates the descent to the dead, and contradicts the creeds.

Objection 8 — "Dualism has its own problems" — fails because the interaction problem and pairing problem are unsolved puzzles about mechanism, not refutations. Physicalism has its own unsolved puzzle — the hard problem of consciousness — and its Christological failures are far more severe than any puzzle dualism faces.

None of these objections succeeds. Not individually, not in combination. The fundamental incompatibility between physicalism and the Incarnation remains. And the case for substance dualism — from Scripture, from philosophy, from history, from the councils, and above all from the doctrine of the Incarnation itself — stands firm.

In our final chapter, we will bring the entire argument of this book to its conclusion, reflecting on the theological significance of what we have found and the glorious truth it points to: the Word made flesh demands the soul.⁶¹