Body, Mind, and Soul

 Crossfire

When you die, you're not going to be surprised, because you're going to be completely dead. Now if find myself aware after I'm dead, I'm going to be really surprised! But at least I'm going to go to hell, where I won't have all of those grinning preachers from Sunday morning listening.

Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear.... There are no gods, no purposes, and no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That's the end of me.

There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will for humans, either... 

Christian humanism has a great deal going for it. It's warm and kindly in many ways. That's the good part. The bad part is that you have to suspend your rational mind. That part is really nasty. Atheistic humanism has the advantage of fitting natural minds trying to understand the world...

William Provine [2]

Contra

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life…Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.

John 5:24-29

Benjamin Franklin famously said, “In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Death is unavoidable. We must all come to terms with the fact that, sooner or later, we shall die. The natural question that arises is: What then? What happens after death? Is there life after death? or not?

Few questions are of greater significance. As Blaise Pascal remarks,

The immortality of the soul is of such vital importance to us and affects us so deeply that we must have lost our wits if we no longer care about it. All our actions and thoughts will follow different paths, according to whether there is hope of eternal blessing. (Pascal 1989: 120)

One path we examined was that of naturalism. We saw that naturalism has great difficulty with the notion of an immaterial soul or mind. If man evolved solely from matter, how can he ever acquire an immaterial soul? If mind evolved from matter, then mind must ultimately be explicable solely in terms of neuro-physiological activities. Such a matter-based mind or soul could not survive bodily death. That is the inevitable conclusion drawn by the materialist historian of science, William Provine, in the above quote. For him there is no hope of everlasting life. The path of naturalism leads, quite literally, to a dead end.

The path of Christianity, on the other hand, leads to eternal life. Biblical Christianity views humans as consisting of two distinct substances: a material body united with an immaterial soul. Christianity stresses the importance of our soul and its proper relation to God. The soul is vital to spiritual life. It survives physical death. Ultimately the soul of the Christian is re-united with his (renewed and transformed) body when he receives his eternal reward.

In our day mind/body dualism is widely thought to be scientifically untenable. Even many Christian philosophers and scientists assert that the human soul is just a complex property of our body and, as such, cannot exist apart from our body.

In this chapter we shall examine the relation between body, mind, and soul. What is the soul? How is it related to mind? How are both related to the body? What does the Bible have to say on these issues? Is an immaterial soul essential to Christianity? How strong are the objections against mind/body dualism? Such questions will be our prime concern.

What is the Soul?

The common-sense view that most people instinctively hold is that we consist of an immaterial soul inside a material body. My soul is my innermost I, my conscious self, that drives my life and unifies all the mental experiences of my mind. It is the real me. Although my body is currently an integral part of me, most people can imagine inhabiting a different body or having an out-of-body experience.

Research by psychologist Iris Berent and colleagues confirms that this intuition—what they call "intuitive dualism"—is deeply rooted in human psychology. In a 2024 study published in Open Mind, Berent and Sansiveri note that people naturally perceive minds and bodies as separate entities, an intuition that appears across cultures and emerges early in childhood. Their research shows that even large language models, trained purely on human-generated text without innate cognitive biases, develop dualist tendencies when reasoning about minds and bodies. While Berent herself argues that such intuitions may arise from psychological biases rather than reflecting metaphysical reality, they nevertheless capture a universal human experience that should not be dismissed lightly.

Clearly, soul and body are intimately related. Physical events can cause mental events (e.g., a blow to my head causes me pain). Conversely, mental events can cause physical events (e.g., I decide to write down a mathematical equation).

This common-sense view is called interactive substance dualism. Various forms of it have been dominant throughout history.

Historical Perspectives on the Soul

Aristotle, in De Anima (i.e., On the Soul), distinguished between three aspects of the soul: the zoe (the property of life, which included plants and animals), the psucho (a sensitive awareness, which is shared by animals and humans) and the pneuma (the rational mind, which only humans have).

Similar distinctions were made by Augustine and Thomas Aquinas (1224-74). Aquinas viewed the soul as a substance present in any living organism, whether human, dog, or even simple one-cell life. The Thomistic soul is a self that directs the formation of the body and mind as the organism grows. The soul gives purpose and direction to the developing body. This concept of the soul is promoted also by the Christian scholars J.P. Moreland & Scott Rae (2000:201). On this view the soul is present in the body from the moment of conception.

John Calvin defined the soul to be the essence of a person. It was the proper seat of God’s image in man. To Calvin, the soul is an immaterial substance, dwelling in the body but separable from it. The soul has various powers, the two most basic ones being the power to understand and the power to will (Calvin, Institutes I.xv.7).

Rene Descartes reduced the human soul to the mind, identifying the person with a purely conscious substance. He considered the human body to be a material machine controlled by an immaterial spirit, much like a captain steers a ship. However, a soul is much more intimately connected to its body than a captain is to his ship. This is shown, for example, by the fact that the soul experiences pain when the body is hurt.

Because animals did not speak, although they have the physical means to do so, Descartes believed that animals lacked souls. Consequently, he considered animals to be physical automata, without any actual feelings or experiences.

Most pet-owners would probably disagree with Descartes. One wonders whether Descartes ever romped with a dog or befriended a horse. It is well-known, however, that he played with machines. Descartes was so enthused about mechanical life that he bought a human-like machine, a female robot he called "Franchina", who sometimes accompanied him on his travels (Herbert 1993:111).

Do You Need a Non-material Soul?

Currently the notion of a non-material soul is not popular among scientists and philosophers, most of whom are physicalists. Physicalism is the belief that everything is physical; there are no non-physical substances, such as a non-material soul.

There are two types of physicalism. Reductive physicalists, such as Francis Crick believe that all mental events (e.g., thoughts and beliefs) can be fully reduced to brain events (e.g., neural and chemical processes). Non-reductive physicalists, on the other hand, believe that mental events cannot be fully reduced to brain events. The mind, although assumed to emerge from the brain and to have no separate non-material substance, nevertheless is granted to exhibit non-physical properties such as consciousness and intentionalism. This latter type of physicalism, where body and mind share the same substance but have distinctly different properties, is known as property dualism, as opposed to the substance dualism of Descartes.

Both types of physicalism entail that the human person cannot exist without a physical body, and that the mind cannot function without a physical brain.

Most physicalists are naturalists. They try to explain the existence of everything from an initial universe of energy-matter evolving according to purely natural laws. Given their atheistic worldview, it is not surprising that they would view humans as purely physical beings. In earlier chapters we discussed the difficulties naturalism has in explaining such things as human mind, rationality, morality, and self

Christian Physicalism

What is perhaps surprising is that (non-reductive) physicalism has recently gained prominence among Christian scholars. Christian physicalists, such as Donald MacKay (1979), Arthur Peacocke (1993), N.T. Wright (2011), Nancey Murphy (2006), and Alister McGrath (2015), grant that God is spirit, but hold that man is wholly physical. They assert that man's soul is no more than a complex property of his body, having no special substance of its own.

Nancey Murphy has been particularly influential in advocating Christian physicalism. In her book Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies? (2006), Murphy argues:

"My central thesis is, first, that we are our bodies—there is no additional metaphysical element such as a mind or soul or spirit. But, second, this 'physicalist' position need not deny that we are intelligent, moral, and spiritual" (Murphy 2006: ix).

Christian physicalism tries to marry two competing worldviews, each with its own motivation, metaphysics, and epistemology. A basic argument for physicalism is that it is impossible for a non-material soul to interact with a physical substance. But Christianity affirms that spiritual non-material agents (e.g., God, angels, demons) can influence material things. In particular, Christianity holds that the conscious self, or soul, does not need a physical brain. If angelic souls can exist without a physical body, why not human souls?

Christian physicalism faces several theological problems. For example, if the human soul is just a complex property of the body, how can it survive bodily death? And if the soul dies with the body, so that the person ceases to exist, how can the resurrected person be the same as the person that died? We shall consider these problems in the following sections.

Body and Soul in the Bible

How does the Bible view the soul? The pertinent biblical words are nephesh (Hebrew) and psuche (Greek), which are generally translated in English as soul, and ruach (Hebrew) and pneuma (Greek), which are usually translated as spirit. In the Bible, soul and spirit are often used interchangeably.

Spirits as Immaterial Persons

The Bible tells us that God, the ultimate person, is a Spirit (pneuma) (John 4:24), a non-material reality. In the beginning, the spirit (ruach) of God moves upon the face of the waters (Gen.1:2). Similarly, angels and demons (fallen angels) are persons who are spirits (ruach or pneuma). Angels are said to be "ministering spirits" (Hebr. 1:14). There are also "demonic spirits" (Rev. 16:14). Thus, it is evident that persons can exist without physical bodies, as immaterial spirits.

Such spirits can relate with bodies. For example, God and angels can take on physical forms (Gen.18; 19:1). Demons can dwell in human bodies ("the evil spirits came out of them" Acts 19:12), as well as in swine (Matt. 8:28-32). Further, Satan and his angels were expelled from heaven: "there was no longer any place for them in heaven" (Rev.12:8). This implies that spirits occupy a spatial position. Spirits, then, are immaterial persons that occupy space and can be embodied.

The Creation and Nature of the Human Soul

With respect to the creation of Adam, the Bible teaches that his spirit was added to flesh and bones to form a living person:

then the LORD God formed the man of the dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (ruach), and the man became a living creature (nephesh) (Gen. 2:7; see also Ezek. 37:1-10).

The "breath of life (ruach)" given to Adam (Gen. 2:7) is found also in animals: "and they went into the ark to Noah, two by two, of all flesh, in which is the breath of life (ruach)" (Gen. 7:15). Similarly, nephesh, the word for “soul” or “being”, is also translated as "life" and applies to animals: "also to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life (nephesh), I have given every green herb for food" (Gen. 1:30). Thus animals, too, are said to have a soul or spirit.

How do human souls differ from those of animals and plants? As Augustine notes, human souls are surely more complex and intelligent. We alone are formed in the image of God. Since we are made in the image of God, the properties most important for understanding our personhood are those we have in common with God. These include such things as a conscious self, rationality, creativity, righteousness, and knowledge, limited as these may be for humans.

How are Souls Made?

How human souls are made is very much a mystery. As we saw in previous chapters, naturalists believe either that the existence of soul/mind properties is purely illusionary or that such non-material properties somehow emerge from the brain, once the brain is sufficiently developed, via some as yet inexplicable process.

The Bible also leaves the question largely unanswered. It is clear that Adam's soul was created directly by God. But what about Adam's offspring?

There are two basic Christian views. The first, called creationism, contends that each human soul is directly created by God. Parents transmit to their child only its physical body. God unites the child’s soul to its body sometime between conception and birth. Creationism is based on such texts as Genesis 2:7, Ecclesiastes 12:7, Isaiah 57:16 ("the breath of life that I made"), and Zechariah 12:1 ("the Lord who...formed the spirit of man within him"). This view is held by Roman Catholics and most Reformed theologians, including John Calvin and Louis Berkhof.

The opposing view, called traducianism (from the Latin traducere, which means “to lead across” or “propagate”) holds that human parents generate both the body and the soul of their child. Bible texts adduced in its favor include Genesis 2:22 ("and the rib...he made into a woman"), which makes no mention of an extra soul added on by God. Other pertinent texts include:

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. (Rom. 5:12)

One might even say that Levi himself...paid tithes through Abraham, for he was still in the loins of his ancestor when Melchizedek met him. (Hebr. 7:9-10)

This view is supported, among many others, by Martin Luther, Gordon Clark, and Robert Reymond (1998:424).

One problem for creationism is that it allows for only a physical connection between Adam and his offspring. Yet elsewhere in Scripture it seems that parents transmit also various aspects of character. We know that children often have character traits that are remarkably like those of their parents. Yet, if God directly creates each human soul, how could mental or moral characteristics be propagated?

Also, how was Adam’s sinful nature passed on to his offspring? The Westminster Confession asserts,

 Adam’s sin was imputed; and the same death in sin, and corrupted nature [were] conveyed to all [his] posterity descending from [him] by ordinary generation (6:iii).

Note the closing words "by ordinary generation", which seem to favor traducianism. Creationism must postulate either that God directly creates sinful souls, or that the soul somehow becomes contaminated by the body.

How are animal souls transmitted? It seems plausible that the same general method of generation applies to both human and animal souls. Are we to believe, then, that God directly creates the soul of each dog, bird, and bug? Or, if only human souls survive death, does this difference perhaps imply also a difference in the mode of generation?

Traducianism seems more plausible both with respect to the generation of animal souls, and the transmission of human sinful nature. The biblical texts cited to support the divine creation of the human soul do not explicitly rule out secondary causes. Nevertheless, traducianism still leaves unanswered the question of how an immaterial soul can generate souls for its offspring.

Perhaps the solution can be found in combining both approaches. God could decree that, once specific physical conditions arise (e.g., a fertilized human egg), a non-material soul is created with properties corresponding to those of its parents. Were this to occur according to specific rules, it would be part of the normal functioning of the world as decreed by God. In this manner souls could by directly created by God while, at the same time, transmitting hereditary properties.

Human Souls Survive Death

What happens to me when I die? At that point my soul is separated from my body: "and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit (ruach) returns to God who gave it" (Eccl. 12:7). My body dies and disintegrates; my spirit returns to God.

That the soul or spirit survives physical death is indicated in various other biblical texts. We are told, for example, "do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul (psuche)" (Matt. 10:28). Christ, when he died, was still alive in the spirit: "being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit (pneuma), in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison" (1 Pet. 3:18-19).

Jesus' words to the thief on the cross, "today you will be with me in Paradise" (Luke 23:43), imply that the thief will be with Jesus in the intermediate, spiritual state after their physical deaths. Paul says that to be absent from the body is to be present with Christ (2 Cor. 5:1-10, Phil. 1:21-24), intimating that the spirit can exist separate from the body.

The Intermediate State

The intermediate state (between death and resurrection) is a state in which believers enjoy a conscious communion with God. They are dressed in white robes, speak, remember their past life, and are aware of each other and what is happening on earth (see Luke 16:19-31; 1 Thess. 5:10; Rev. 6:9-11; 7:9; 20:4). This suggests that they may well have temporary physical bodies.

In the Bible the interim realm of departed souls is called sheol (Hebrew, Old Testament) or hades (Greek, New Testament). Although sheol/hades is often translated as “hell”, it is generally a neutral realm for all departed souls, whether saved or lost, before the final judgment. The more permanent biblical “hell”, the fiery place for the wicked after the final judgment, is denoted by the Greek word Gehenna (cf. Matt. 5:22) or as “the lake of fire” (Rev. 20:13-15).

Sheol/Hades is subdivided in two places, one for the saved (“paradise”) and one for the unsaved. This is evident in Jesus’s parable of Lazarus and the rich man, whose souls both went to sheol/hades, but Lazarus was carried by angels to Abraham’s bosom, whereas the rich man went to a place of torment, separated from Lazarus by a great chasm (Luke 16: 19-30).

It is evident that when Jesus died, his soul went to hades (Acts 2:23-31), but to the good portion of hades, “Abraham’s bosom”, also called “paradise” (Luke 23:43). Paradise is located in the “the third heaven” (2 Cor. 12:2-4), near God’s heavenly throne (Rev. 4-6).

The Resurrection of Human Bodies

Since the spirit survives bodily death, it cannot be identified with the body. Nevertheless, the biblical view of man indicates a strong connection between the body and the immaterial spirit. In our earthly life, the two are integrally united into a living soul. The separation of human body and soul is unnatural. Although it occurs at death, when the soul continues alone, the soul is ultimately to be re-united with a renewed body.

The future resurrection of all humans, when Christ returns, just before the final judgment, is an essential doctrine of Christianity. For example, Jesus said: 

an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment. (John 5:28-29)

This will be a physical, bodily resurrection. Our resurrected body will be the same body we have when we die, but glorified (1 Cor.15: 42-44, 1 Thess. 4:13-18), just as Christ’s resurrected body was still his same body, though now transformed (John 20:24-28).

In the case of Jesus’s resurrection, his corpse had not yet decomposed. The physical connection between one’s corpse and one’s resurrected body is more difficult to conceive when the corpse is totally decomposed, when the ashes following cremation are scattered in the wind, or when cannibals’ bodies share some of the same molecules. Although we might speculate how the same body might be resurrected under such extreme circumstances, God’s miraculous work is clearly involved in any resurrection. Thus Paul writes,

…the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him to subject all things to himself. (Phil. 3:20-21)

The Bible clearly affirms that the resurrected body is the same physical body as before, rather than merely a copy.

In line with the above biblical evidence, the Reformed creeds teach that at death the soul is separated from the body, to be re-united to it at the last judgment:

For all the dead shall be raised out of the earth, and their souls joined and united with their proper bodies in which they formerly lived" (Belgic Confession Article 37).

QUESTION. What comfort does the resurrection of the body afford you?

ANSWER. That not only my soul, after this life, shall immediately be taken up to Christ, its head [Luke 16:22; 23:43; Philippians 1:21, 23]; but also my body, raised by the power of Christ, shall again be united with my soul, and made like unto the glorious body of Christ [Job 19:25, 26; I John 3:2; Philippians 3:21] (Heidelberg Catechism, Lord's Day 22; Question & Answer 57).

The bodies of men, after death, return to dust, and see corruption: but their souls, which neither die nor sleep, having an immortal substance, immediately return to God who gave them: the souls of the righteous...are received into the highest heavens...And the souls of the wicked are cast into hell...

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.

 (Westminster Confession 32).

In short, the Bible teaches that humans have a dual nature, consisting of a physical body and an immaterial soul. For further elaboration on the biblical teaching of the duality of body and soul the reader is referred to the books by J.P. Moreland (2014) and John W. Cooper (2000).

Physicalism and Life after Death

Christian physicalists, we saw, hold that my soul depends fully on my physical body so that, when my body dies, I cease to exist. Thus they deny that my soul continues to exist, without a body, during an intermediate state.

Since Christian physicalists do affirm a future resurrection of the dead, how do they reconcile this with their physical view of humans? Some physicalists believe that, after a gap in time, during which I don’t exist at all, I am resurrected with a glorified body. Others believe that, to ensure my continued existence, I am given a temporary physical body during the intermediate state, to be glorified at the final resurrection.

The Identity Problem

In substance dualism, where my essential self is a non-material soul, it seems possible that my soul can be attached to a different body, so that the new me is still really me. Yet, biblical resurrection is not re-incarnation: I am to be re-united with my same body, though now glorified, at the resurrection. So even in dualism there is an intimate connection between my present body and my future one.

In physicalism, however, where my (physical) soul completely depends on my body, it is more difficult to ensure such continuity of the same self. If my self depends fully on my body, then it seems that I can persist only if my body persists. I can survive bodily changes such as losing a leg, or replacing individual molecules gradually, but I cannot persist if my entire body is changed all at once. 

On such grounds Christian physicalist philosopher Peter van Inwagen (1978:114-121_ concludes that, if human persons are physical substances, nothing but physical continuity can ground the identity of human persons across time. That entails that, if I cease to exist at bodily death, then if I can never ever resume existing. He suggests that, just before death, God replaces my original body with an exact copy, which soon dies, while removing my body to the afterlife (heaven?), where I live on in my body. The corpse is no longer me, just a copy, but this happy exchange is humanly undetectable, at least by others.

A similar “fission” theory is promoted by Calvin University physicalist philosopher Kevin Corcoran (2006). According to Corcoran, at the moment of death my body fissions into a visible corpse and an un-observable living body miraculously transported elsewhere (heaven?). The corpse disintegrates into dust, never to live again, whereas, later, my living body is glorified in the general resurrection.

Critique of Physicalist Theories

Such far-fetched Christian physicalist attempts to accommodate an intermediate state of consciousness fail on two counts.

First, they contradict Scripture. In all biblical accounts of resurrection, it is always the human corpse that is raised back to life from the grave: Lazarus (John 11:38-44), Jesus (John 20:1-9), the saints raised after Jesus’ resurrection (Matt. 27: 52-53), etc.  According to Corcoran, Jesus’ corpse was in the tomb while his intermediate body, later to be glorified, was active elsewhere. But he fails to explain the significance of the empty tomb, or what happened to Jesus’ corpse.

Second, they contradict mainstream science. A prime argument for physicalism is that substance dualism does not conform with mainstream science. However, the proposed miraculous, unobservable, body “fission” and removal to heaven is no less objectionable. If we are to break with mainstream science anyway, regarding human death, why not also regarding human nature?

Critics of Murphy's physicalism, including philosophers like J. P. Moreland (2018), have argued that her view ultimately cannot preserve personal identity across death and resurrection. If our psychological traits are dependent on the body for existence, and the body dies, then those traits pass out of existence. A resurrected "copy" would be a different person with a different act of existence, not the continuation of the same individual. Philosopher David Brown argues that nonreductive physicalism ultimately fails as a Christian position because it undermines the hope that believers will continue to exist and share eternal life with God (Brown 2015).

In sum, physicalism offers no plausible account of the continued existence of the human soul after bodily death, nor of a later bodily resurrection.

Defending an Immaterial Mind

Interactive mind/body dualism is, we have argued, the view of both the Bible and common sense. Why, then, do so many Christian scholars today reject it in favor of Christian physicalism? The main reason is that interactive dualism is widely thought to suffer from fatal deficiencies, particularly scientific ones. For example, according to Reformed theologian Michael Horton,

“Philosophical defenses of materialism seem increasingly substantiated by science. Over recent decades of advanced research in neurobiology and related fields, the fact that the mind is matter (i.e. the brain) has become firmly established.” (Horton 2011:376)

Let us briefly look at some of the objections that have been voiced.

Neuroscience and the Mind

The notion that the mind is identical to the brain, and thus fully explained by neural processes, is based on experiments showing that the mental activity of the mind is closely correlated to the neural processes of the brain. From this it is inferred that mental states are identical to neurophysiological states. Assuming that neural events are fully explained by physical causes, this leaves no room for mental causes. This can easily lead to the absurd conclusion that our thoughts are illusions that cannot influence our actions, so that we have no free will.

However, correlation should not be confused with causation. Even though the mind is closely related to the brain, the two are clearly not identical. After all, neural processes are quite different from chains of thoughts. Further, neuroscience has not been able to give plausible physical explanations for the existence of my thoughts, consciousness, self-awareness, and free will.

Recent work in philosophy of science supports this distinction. As philosopher of science Mihretu Guta (2024) argues, while consciousness and brain states are functionally linked and correlated, this correlation does not establish a causal relationship. The fact that normal brain functioning is necessary for normal mental functioning does not prove that mental states are metaphysically reducible to or caused by brain states.

There is no scientific proof that mental states cannot influence brain states. Rather, that is the basic, physicalist assumption of most neuroscientists, which drives their interpretation of the data. But not all neuroscientists are physicalists. All the neurological evidence can equally well, if not better, be interpreted in terms of substance dualism. This is granted by physicalist philosopher William Lycan (2009) and confirmed by dualist neuroscientist Mario Beauregard (2007).

Contemporary Neuroscience Research

Recent scholarship continues to document the persistence of dualist thinking in neuroscience and philosophy of mind. Despite decades of materialist assumptions dominating the field, many theories of consciousness still rely on dualist concepts to explain phenomena like free will and moral responsibility. The difficulty of fully reducing consciousness to neural activity remains a significant challenge for physicalist accounts.

A 2024 neuroscience review article (Yurchenko 2024) notes that dualism persists in consciousness science despite decades of attempts to eliminate it. The author observes that many theories of consciousness, including Integrated Information Theory (IIT), implicitly rely on dualist assumptions to explain free will and moral responsibility.

Where does the mind interact with the brain? Descartes thought the mind interacted with the body at the pineal gland, Sir John Eccles the pre-frontal lobe of the dominant hemisphere of the brain, Wilder Penfield the upper brain stem. A recent review article (Zhao et al. 2019) finds that various parts of the brain contribute to different functions of consciousness. The authors suggest that consciousness originates globally, rather than originating from a single brain section.

Even if it were to remain a mystery where and how the mind interacts with the brain, that the mind does interact with the brain is undeniable.

Near-Death Experiences as Evidence

One area of research that has provided intriguing evidence for substance dualism is the study of near-death experiences (NDEs). While NDEs have been reported throughout history, scientific investigation has accelerated in recent decades due to improved resuscitation techniques that can revive more individuals after clinical death.

A landmark 2001 study by van Lommel and colleagues, published in The Lancet, analyzed cardiac arrest survivors. They found that approximately 18% of patients who survived cardiac arrest reported NDEs, including out-of-body experiences, encounters with deceased relatives, and life reviews. Significantly, these experiences occurred during periods when the brain showed no measurable electrical activity.

More recent research continues to document these phenomena. Most studies try to provide naturalistic explanations for NDEs, suggesting they result from dying brain activity or REM intrusion -- a condition where dream-state biological markers overlap with waking consciousness.

However, as neuroscientist Bruce Greyson (2025) observes in his comprehensive review, these materialist explanations encounter formidable obstacles. NDEs are frequently reported by patients under general anesthesia or those administered drugs that explicitly suppress the brain’s capacity for dreaming. Furthermore, the literature contains numerous accounts where patients accurately describe specific, objective events occurring around them while they were unconscious. These verified observations serve as a temporal anchor, confirming that lucid consciousness occurred at the precise moment brain function was most severely compromised.

While NDE research remains controversial and is subject to ongoing debate, it provides empirical data that aligns well with substance dualism and challenges purely physicalist explanations of consciousness. The consistent reports of lucid consciousness during periods of documented brain impairment raise significant questions about the mind-brain relationship.

How do Minds Operate?

A common objection against mind/body dualism is that it is not clear how two entirely distinct substances can possibly interact. How can mind and matter influence each other if they are two totally different substances? How can mental choices, governed by moral “oughts”, influence the physical body, governed by physical laws? Conversely, how can bodily activities generate conscious experiences?

We note, first, that this is no less a problem for materialism. In Chapter 6 we saw the great difficulty materialism had in accounting for conscious experiences and an active mind. As we already noted, physical properties cannot be merely different descriptions of mental properties, for physical laws are quite distinct from logical and moral laws.

Even if we were to consider mental properties to be of an ultimately physical nature, mental physical properties would still be so unlike non-mental physical properties that we would still be faced with the problem of how they interact. Hence, simply calling mind a special form or property of matter solves nothing. It just rephrases the question, rather than answering it.

Idealism as an Alternative

A quite different resolution of the mind/body problem is to reduce matter to a property of mind. This is the idealism of the Irish philosopher George Berkeley (1685-1753). Berkeley, attacking the materialism of his day, denied the real existence of matter. He asserted that there exist only minds and ideas. All we really know about physical objects is the sense impressions they make on our minds. Berkeley argued that the physical universe existed not in itself, but only by its presence in the divine mind. God impresses the ideas of the physical world onto our minds. God ensures the consistency and uniformity of our ideas about the physical world. Thus, Berkeley solved the mind/body interaction problem by reducing matter to a particular type of idea.

More recently, idealism has been promoted by the Christian philosopher Bruce Gordon (2017). His theistic idealism posits that "the created realm consists entirely of minds and their contents, along with the non-reducible relations between them" (Gordon 2017:1). Gordon argues that the physical world is real but ontologically dependent on God's mind, existing as structured phenomenal content in the divine consciousness.

This ingenious philosophy seems contrary to our common experiences of the world. Our world seems to have a real, concrete existence. The English writer Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), upon learning of Berkeley's theory, is said to have kicked a rock along the street, accompanied with the words "thus I refute you!" But Berkeley's philosophy is not easily refuted by either logic or experience. After all, Berkeley does not deny that we can have experiences of heartily booting solid stones. His point is that we experience only our mental sense impressions of rocks, never the actual rocks themselves.

Berkeley's philosophy has the merit of stressing the dependence of the material world on God for its continued existence. God indeed upholds all things "by the word of his power" (Hebr. 1:3). Perhaps “word” does here convey the notion of an idea. Yet, if so, it must be a very special type of idea. God's creation of the world entails that, unlike other ideas, these are actualized ideas, existing in concrete form before the existence of man. We must then distinguish between abstract ideas and actualized, material ideas. This, however, brings us back to two different types of entities, or ideas, and the question of how they interact. Therefore, also Berkeley's proposed solution merely rephrases the problem.

Interaction as Fundamental

It is not only mind-matter interactions that are puzzling. As we saw in earlier chapters, many matter-matter interactions are no less mysterious. Think of the action-at-a-distance of gravity or the unpredictability of atomic physics. We saw that, ultimately, physical laws are not prescriptive of what must happen but simply descriptive of what does happen. Why, then, should we not treat mind/body connections in the same manner? Our experienced mind/body interactions are no less descriptive of what does in fact happen, regardless of whether we can understand the underlying mechanism.

One might object that, unlike physical interactions, mind/body interactions involve two distinct substances that have nothing in common. However, even physical interactions can involve very different types of things. For example, the solid earth, with its specific shape and concrete properties, seems quite distinct from the invisible, all-pervasive gravitational field that it is thought to generate. Similarly, the probability wave of an electron differs greatly from the actual electron particle that eventually hits a photographic plate. Moreover, the Principle of Causality asserts only that every event has a sufficient cause. It does not insist that the cause be similar in substance to the effect. That is merely a materialist presupposition.

That spirit can influence matter is clear when we recall that God, a Spirit, created the entire universe--matter and spirit--and continues to uphold it at each instance. He does so by his word of power. Matter's very existence depends on a mind-matter causal relationship. Mind is therefore more fundamental than matter.

God-World Interaction as Model

Could the God-world interaction serve as a model for the human mind/body interaction? The similarity between the two suggests a close link between theism and mind/body dualism. Indeed, many contemporary philosophers reject dualism precisely because of its perceived connection to theism. Nevertheless, this analogy should not be pressed too hard. Our mind is, at least in present state, strongly dependent upon our body, whereas God is in no way dependent on the physical world.

Theism does, however, provide a possible mechanism for mind/body interaction. At each instance God, in his providence, upholds both our body and mind by his word of power. Normally, barring miracles, the universe at the next instance will be in accordance with the properties God has assigned his creatures. One of these human properties is our mental control of our bodies. Hence, God, as the primary cause of all events, could cause our mental choices to be translated into physical effects. If God were to do this according to specific rules, it would be part of the normal functioning of his creation.

Minding Energy

The most common objection against dualism is that it violates well-established physical laws, such as conservation of energy. This is often upheld as the decisive refutation of dualism. For example, materialist philosopher Mario Bunge asserts:

Dualism violates conservation of energy. If immaterial mind could move matter, then it would create energy; and if matter were to act on mind, then energy would disappear...Energy would fail to be conserved...and so physics, chemistry, biology, and economics would collapse. Faced with a choice between these "hard" sciences and primitive superstition, we opt for the former...

Dualism is consistent with creationism, not with evolutionism...A consistent evolutionist...will postulate that mental functions, no matter how exquisite, are neuro-physiological activities. (Bunge 1980:17-18)

Similarly, philosopher Daniel Dennett writes:

Let us concentrate on the returned signals, the directives from mind to brain. These, ex hypothesi, are not physical...How, then, do they get to make a difference to what happens in the brain cells they must affect, if the mind is to have any influence on the body? A fundamental principle of physics is that any change in the trajectory of any physical entity is an acceleration requiring the expenditure of energy, and where is this energy to come from? It is this principle of conservation of energy that accounts for the impossibility of "perpetual motion machines," and the same principle is apparently violated by dualism. This...is widely regarded as the inescapable and fatal flaw of dualism. (Dennett 1991:35)

How well-founded is this criticism of mind/body dualism? Several responses can be made.

1. Minimal Energy Requirements

First, it is not clear that mental decisions require any exchange of energy. For all we know, the implementation of a mental choice may be like opening or closing a frictionless switch in an electric circuit. This need not require any energy. Even if it did, chaotic effects might be used to amplify the initial mental signal, so that the initial energy required might be infinitesimally small or, at least, smaller than can be measured within quantum limits.

A complicated mind-brain model, relying on quantum mechanics and obeying conservation of energy, has been developed by neuroscientist Sir John Eccles. Eccles optimistically concludes:

It is reassuring that all the richness and enjoyment of our experiences can now be accepted without any qualms of conscience that we may be infringing conservation laws. (Eccles 1994:170)

It must be stressed that Eccles' model is very speculative, and by no means widely accepted. Nevertheless, Eccles’ model does suggest that energy concerns need not be a problem.

Recent philosophical work by David Hodgson (2012) suggests that the tiny gaps between brain cells (synapses) are where the "mind" takes control. In these small spaces, quantum physics works like a roll of the dice—nothing is 100% certain. Hodgson argues that the mind doesn't have to create its own energy to actualize its decisions. Instead, it simply acts as a "referee" that chooses which dice rolls happen. By picking between the options the brain already has, the mind can guide our actions without breaking the laws of science.

2. Expanding Our Conception of Energy

Consider also that the principle of conservation of energy is based on our observations of purely physical interactions. In the past, the definition of energy has been broadened to accommodate new discoveries. For example, to balance the energy equation, matter is now considered to be a form of energy. In a similar fashion, it may be possible that our conception of energy may have to be modified to accommodate mind/body interactions. No sufficiently precise measurements have yet been made to prove that conservation of energy applies to mind/body interactions.

3. The Status of Conservation Laws

Finally, we must recognize that the notion of conservation of energy is itself a theoretical construct of our mind. It is an extrapolation from limited physical observations. It is a striking irony that a product of our creative intellect should be used to deny the very agency of the mind that conceived it. Since our most direct, basic experience is that of the mind influencing the body, the task of science should be to explain this reality rather than dismiss it.

If mind-body interactions appear to violate energy conservation, we should conclude that this law is a limited physical concept rather than a universal truth. Furthermore, the principle that every physical event must have a physical cause is a methodological assumption, not an absolute law. Thus, it is more rational to adapt our physical laws to accommodate mental forces than to ignore the reality of the mind. 

Conclusions

In conclusion, the Bible teaches that we consist of body and spirit. Our spirit survives physical death and is reunited with its renewed body at the final judgment.

Materialist theories of soul are theologically deficient because they cannot account for the soul's survival of physical death, or for the continuance of our identity in a future embodied life. Objections against mind/body dualism, on the grounds that it violates causality and physical laws, were found to be unjustified.

The evidence from Scripture, philosophy, and even contemporary neuroscience and near-death experience research converges to support substance dualism. While mysteries remain about the precise mechanisms of mind-body interaction and soul generation, these unanswered questions do not undermine the fundamental reality of the immaterial soul.

As J.P. Moreland concludes in his comprehensive treatment of the soul:

The evidence strongly supports the view that we are immaterial souls with bodies, not merely physical organisms. This is not only the clear teaching of Scripture but also the view best supported by philosophical argument and empirical evidence. (Moreland 2014:218)

The Christian hope of eternal life with God depends on the survival of the soul beyond bodily death. This hope is not a primitive superstition to be discarded in light of modern science, but a well-founded confidence rooted in biblical revelation, philosophical reasoning, and the lived experience of believers throughout the ages.

(This post is largely based on Chapter 13 of my book The Divine Challenge, available here).

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