This episode focuses on Paul’s language, in 1 Cor 15 and elsewhere, about the “spiritual body” of the resurrected Jesus—a body that believers will also share. In Paul's day, Gentiles (Greco-Roman culture) and Jews (OT) both believed that gods had bodies -- not made...
soul-body problem
Beautiful Info-Graphic Presentation of the Mind-Body / Consciousness Positions
We covered this topic well over a year ago, but a co-worker at Logos (Eli, you're the man) sent me this link. Really sweet. I'm not sure, though, it it accounts for non-reductive physicalism (the emergent dualism position *might* be closest -- you can review the old...
Some Thoughts on Our Regional ETS Meeting
A week ago the Pacific Northwest region of ETS (Evangelical Theological Society) held its annual meeting. I blogged about it with respect to the plenary focus of the meeting: the Mind-Body problem. John Cooper (Calvin Seminary), Nancey Murphy (Fuller Seminary), and...
The Mind-Body Problem: Summarizing the Tough Issues
Well, I'm less than a week away from our regional ETS meeting in Tacoma. The topic, of course, crafted by yours truly, is the mind-body problem. It's been a while since I posted about the positions people take on the question of whether humans truly have an immaterial...
Biblical Anthropology and the Mind-Body Debate, Part 3
In the last post I introduced the basic positions on the mind-body debate. Here are three good articles on the issue that I'd also recommend reading: The Dialogue Between Neuroscience and Theology, by Dr. Alan J. Gijspers (physician) Scientific Perspectives on...
Biblical Anthropology and the Mind-Body Debate, Part 2
In an effort to further prod your thinking on the mind-body issue, here are some excerpts from Wayne Grudem's theology textbook[1. Wayne A. Grudem, Systematic Theology : An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Leicester, England; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Inter-Varsity...
Biblical Anthropology and the Mind-Body Debate, Part 1
We now come to one of the primary points of application for the data of biblical anthropology, the mind-body problem. Before sketching the various views for you, let's review the salient data from the biblical text. Review 1. That terms like ruach, nephesh, leb/lebab...
Biblical Anthropology, Part 7
Time to (finally) wrap this one up. You may have thought our discussion of biblical anthropology--specifically what "makes up" a human being--was over. Not so. We've spent six posts going through the evidence, beginning with looking up every occurrence of Hebrew...
Biblical Anthropology, Part 6
In my last post on biblical anthropology, I left you with three questions: 1. What about Old Testament thinking about the "heart"? Does this point to a third part of a human being, or does it overlap with nephesh and ruach? 2. What about the OT Shema statements ("You...
Biblical Anthropology, Part 5
In my last biblical anthropology post, I posed these three questions. Here they are again with some proposed answers: 1. When nephesh is described as being in sheol, does the term refer to only the inner part, the body, or the totality? It seems that if Sheol refers...
Biblical Anthropology, Part 4
I've posted prelimianry notes on both ruach and nephesh in the previous two posts. Now it's time to merge those files and observations. It's pretty interesting that the terms are used so often in the same ways and to describe the same things. Here's a list: 1. The...
Biblical Anthropology, Part 3
This one is like Part 2. I'm sharing my notes on nephesh now that I'm through all 50 pages of the PDF. Here are my notes on the range of meanings. My next step is to take my notes on ruach and nephesh and starting raising some questions and drawing some conclusions...
Biblical Anthropology, Part 2
I've read through the two smaller PDFs now - the ones dealing with "spirit" (ruach). I've been taking notes and trying to categorize the semantic range of the term (only as it pertains to humans). I've attached these notes, preliminary as they are, here in PDF form....
Biblical Anthropology, Part 1
I've been thinking about getting into this topic for some time. The issue can be cast in two ways. 1. In terms of biblical theology, is a human being composed of two parts (flesh/body + immaterial soul) or three parts (flesh/body + soul + spirit)? 2. In terms of...