Search Results for: J.P. Moreland

Distilling a Defense of The Soul: An Interview with J.P. Moreland

Posted on May 3, 2014 by - afterlife, essentialism, interview, jp moreland, philosophical anthropology, philosophy of mind, soul, the soul (book)

In my interview with J.P. Moreland, not only does he discuss his latest book, but he also discusses trends he sees in the culture that further require a defense of a substance dualist account of the human person.

The Soul seems to function as a ‘primer’ relative to your many other books and articles on this topic. If so, it’s striking to me that such a book would emerge now in this season of your vocation vs. at the beginning of your professional life as a philosopher. What do you find yourself wanting to emphasize now that is different yet similar to what you’ve been writing about all these years regarding the existence of the soul?

I wrote The Soul at this stage of my life rather than at the beginning of my career because I have studied the issue for many years and have a lot more to say about it now.  I have published a number of technical pieces on the mind/body problem and thought it was time for me to write a book that was accessible to thoughtful laypersons. 

For those that have not tracked your work on the soul, what might be ‘new’ to them compared to what else they may find in the literature on this topic?

There are really two emphases in The Soul that could, in some sense, be taken as new.  First, I am deeply concerned that there are such things as Christian physicalists.  For the life of me, I don’t see how one can, with integrity, avoid a dualist reading of the Bible, especially if the dualism in mind is not a fairly extreme form of Platonic dualism (the soul is immortal on it’s own, the body is evil as is manual labor, the final state will be disembodied).  I have read Nancey Murphy and Joel Green, and have listened to their lectures on this and had personal conversations with Green, so I know their views.  And without being mean-spirited, I am convinced that Christian physicalism is eisegesis that tries to find a way to read physicalism into the Bible so Christians won’t have to be embarrassed by an outdated dualism that has been largely undermined by science.  To address this concern, I devote an entire chapter of the book to a fairly careful interpretation of the key passages and show that dualism is the biblical view.  Second, over the years, I have picked up some new arguments (and some new ways to put old arguments) for a substantial, immaterial self/soul, ego, I.

The book is dedicated to your friend and mentor, Dallas Willard: “a man with the largest soul I ever encountered.” Of all that Dallas taught you, what’s the most indispensable insight he taught you about the human person?

Dallas taught me many things about human persons, so it is hard to boil all that down to a single insight.  But if I were forced to do so, I suppose it would be that laypeople think that science has shown we are our brains, that this is entirely false and, indeed, the view of the human person in the Bible is still the most reasonable view to hold: that the soul diffuses the body in such a way that the body really contains the soul (the body is en-souled matter), such that soulish dispositions reside in the body qua en-souled matter, and so spiritual formation includes attending to those dispositions by way of habit formation.

So, given what Dallas taught you, how have you tried to extend your own work ‘beyond’ Dallas?

A way of honoring any mentor is to attempt to extend what he taught you beyond his teaching by developing it more fully and extending it into new areas of reflection.  My main work that extends Dallas’ has been (1) developing detailed critiques of the various forms of physicalism extant in the current academic culture; (2) formulating more arguments for substance dualism.  These extensions are in my book.  I should say that I advance my arguments and hold to my views, not primarily because they stand as extensions of Dallas’ thought, but because I think they are true and rationally defensible.

In the Introduction, you spend about two paragraphs articulating some thoughts about human embodiment, where you “take the body to be an ensouled, spatially extended, physical structure” (16). Over the years, most of your approach to explaining the existence and significance of the soul has seemed to focus on acquainting people with the irreducible nature of nonphysical (spiritual) reality (e.g., consciousness) and showing the failures of philosophical naturalism. Is there a reason why your work has not also given priority to a focus on embodiment, given your Thomistic substance dualism? Wouldn’t that Thomistic sense of embodiment have an evidential force to explaining the necessity of a soul?

You are right that the Aristotelian/Thomistic version of the soul and the way it is embodied has not been a major aspect of my writings, though I do lecture on it in my classes at Talbot.  And you are also correct that, given that a body is such only if en-souled—a body without a soul is a corpse, not a body—there are many powers in the body that are not, strictly speaking, physical (e.g., the power to feel anxiety in different parts of the body).  But one can only do so much, and as my career has developed, I have earnestly prayed for Jesus to guide my research and publishing, and as a result, defeating philosophical naturalism as a worldview, and showing that mind/body physicalism is at home in naturalism and not in theism, have been major preoccupations of my intellectual work. 

The last chapter, “The Future of the Human Person” is not about future trajectories in anthropology but about the afterlife. You spend a considerable amount of attention on hell, which evolves into issues of soteriology. While there are echoes of your book with Gary Habermas, Beyond Death, why include a discussion about hell in a book about the soul? Or, for you, what does eschatology and soteriology have to do with philosophical anthropology?

I remain unconvinced by the various physicalist attempts to render an afterlife intelligible, given a physicalist anthropology, and I have read most of those attempts.  Thus, dualism is essential for making credible the reality of the afterlife.  In this regard, the literature on Near Death Experiences provides overwhelming evidence for the existence of a soul and the reality of disembodied existence near or after death.  While I do not agree with the doctrinal ideas in every DNE account, there are simply too many credible accounts that have been studied carefully which lend support to dualism and a disembodied intermediate state between death and final resurrection.  In my last chapter of The Soul I include two NDEs that support these claims.  Besides, if one becomes convinced that the soul is real, then one should give serious attention to what happens after one dies.  In order to give guidance to such attention, I include as the last chapter a treatment of the afterlife.

Anyone who has read your articles and books for any length of time will quickly discover that you are passionate about ‘deconstructing’ the hegemony of scientism in the academy and in the culture at large. Is there a correlation between your critique of that epistemic-cultural hegemony and your (not often known) critique of the hegemony and domination of political power in a society?

There is, indeed, such a connection.  It is on the basis of the possession (or the perceived possession) of knowledge that people have the authority to act in public and shape the common good.  Unfortunately, scientism has led a number of cultural elites to reject traditional Christianity as outmoded and falsified, and to seek to replace it with progressive forms of secularism.  This movement is gaining ascendency in the centers of power in our culture—the schools, universities, media, entertainment, and politics.  This is why we must undermine scientism and contend for Christianity in the public square.  Journalist and regular contributor to Fox News on television—Kirsten Powers—recently converted to Christianity from a secular worldview precisely because she heard a rational defense of the faith and came to realize that the good evidence was on the side of the Christian religion.

We seem to live in a cultural milieu where there is widespread pluralism regarding ‘human identity.’ For example, it is not uncommon for the patterns of our public discourse to run wild with ‘identity talk,’ whether referring to ‘identity politics,’ ‘gay identity,’ or ‘national identity,’ and still more, our ‘Christian identity’ and ‘ethnic identity.’ Granted, these are probably not univocal meanings of ‘identity.’ But what do you make of the proliferation this ‘identity’ fixation?

The proliferation of ‘identity’ talk represents the rejection of essentialism with its replacement on a form of postmodern constructivism according to which I can construct any identity for myself I want and form groups of others with the same constructed identity.  This group hegemony keeps one from facing who they really are, essentially (image bearers of the biblical God who gave them a nature), and, instead, hiding from reality by the soothing comfort that comes from group reinforcement of their constructed world.

For many philosophers and theologians, your work has helped to shape plausibility conditions and pathways for others to traverse in ‘thinking Christianly’ about metaphysics, philosophy of mind and theological anthropology. What do you hope a next generation of scholars will be enabled to do with and ‘beyond’ the areas that you have cared so deeply about?

I hope that laypersons, especially young Christians who getting ready to go to college or are already there (or who have just graduated) will read The Soul as a way of resisting cultural incorporation into views antithetical to Christianity and common sense.  If we can establish dualism as the biblical and most defensible view throughout the Christian community, then the cream will rise to the top:  some Christians who go into various fields will use the notion of the soul to integrate what they do with the Christian faith.  Such integration keeps Christianity from being marginalized and it shows the important intellectual work the central concepts in Christianity do when employed in the right way.  And the notion of the soul is one of the most important concept for that work.

More about J.P. Moreland can be found at his website. Readers might also be interested in the recent collection of essays by some of J.P.’s friends, which reflect upon and advance some major themes in his writings, entitled, Loving God with Your Mind: Essays in Honor of J.P. Moreland, edited by Paul Gould and Richard Davis (Moody Publishers, 2013).

Christian Worldview Integration: Interview with J.P. Moreland (part two)

Posted on January 20, 2010 by - christian worldview integration series, frank beckwith, interview, jp moreland

We continue our interview with J.P. Moreland about the InterVarsity Press Christian Worldview Integration series, which he and Frank Beckwith are co-editing. In part one of our interview, Moreland talked about the meaning and significance of conceptual integration and its relevancy to Christian philosophy work.

Over the last twenty years, there has been important progress made toward Christian work that integrates psychology and spiritual formation. As a trained philosopher with tremendous appreciation for Christian spiritual formation work, what might further integration work look like between Christian philosophy and spiritual formation?

There are two areas where Christian philosophy can help.  First, Christian philosophers can work out theories of knowledge within which spiritual formative claims can be taken as sources of knowledge of reality, specifically, of how humans flourish.  Second, they can work out views of human persons according to which spiritual formation is seen as laying hold of the real nature of human persons and their functioning, e.g., by rooting virtue ethics in the nature of human personhood rather than seeing it as “grounded” in tradition.

If Christians neglect to engage in integration work, what are the costs or consequences?

We will become increasingly marginalized in the culture, Christian ideas will not be taken as cognitively respectable claims about the real world, and people will place Christian ideas in what Francis Schaeffer used to call “the upper story,” a non-factual realm  forever isolated from rational scrutiny.

How and why is integration work interrelated with Christian apologetics work?

Integration goes beyond apologetics in that integration should lead to the exploration and discovery of truths in one’s field that would not be readily available to secular thinkers without the aid of scripture.  But integration also involves apologetics in which defeaters of Christianity are removed and positive evidence is provided for a Christian truth-claim relevant to one’s fields, and integration also involved polemics—the practice of criticizing alternative worldviews that shape one’s field of study.

Over the years, you’ve not only been a scholar, public speaker, pastor/church planter and author, but you’ve had several opportunities to be an advisor or consultant for various organizations and institutions. Let me ask you to put on your advisory hat and have you speak to various groups of people about their integration efforts.

What are the top three issues or concerns that Christian faculty should confront when attempting to integrate their Christian beliefs with their discipline? 

First, is there is non-empirical knowledge, extra-scientific knowledge of reality evident in my field.  Second, are there immaterial aspects of reality in my field of study, e.g., aesthetic beauty, normative ethical claims, linguistic meanings, mathematical objects, free action, and so forth.  Third, how would I as a Christian practice my discipline in a way different from a non-Christian and how would I justify a Christian approach?  The Christian Worldview Integration series takes these issues up in various fields and seeks to lead by example.

What are the top three words of encouragement that you would give to undergraduate and graduate students, who not only seek to experience how Christianity bears upon the formation of their worldview, but who want their work in knowledge to bear upon their lives and their relationships?

First, remember that this sort of integrative work is already being done, for example, in the field of philosophy, with the result that great gains for the Kingdom have been made in philosophy.  So this can be done with great impact.  Second, realize that this sort of work is part of your calling in life.  What if Jesus asked you, “Why don’t you honor me in your discipline?”, would you have an answer for Him?  Third, integration should be viewed as an adventure and not just as a duty.  It’s really exciting work.  And don’t forget, the Christian Worldview Integration series is an attempt to provide resources for getting involved in this area of discipleship.

What are the top three pieces of advice that you would give to funders (whether individual donors or corporate donors) of a Christian university about the significance of Christian worldview integration work?

First, funds need to be given in areas of missions and development that are underfunded, and this area of discipleship fits that description.  Second, we need to focus funding on leadership development for cultural engagement and this area of discipleship fits that description.  Finally, we need to fund areas of activity that seek to penetrate the culture in the world of ideas and this area of discipleship fits that description.

In the years to come, what would you like to see happen in the area of integration and this series among self-identified Christian universities, colleges, and seminaries?

I would like to see centers of integration developed and funded at these schools, and I would also like to see the Christian Worldview Integration series adopted as key texts in classes around the country; I would also like to see the series expanded from the nine volumes currently being produced to at least fifteen volumes.

You can learn more about the IVP Christian Worldview Integration series by going here. J.P. Moreland is the Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Biola University and Frank Beckwith is the Professor of Philosophy and Church-State Studies at Baylor University.

Christian Worldview Integration: Interview with J.P. Moreland (part one)

Posted on January 5, 2010 by - christian worldview integration series, frank beckwith, jp moreland, worldview integration

InterVarsity Press recently launched a Christian Worldview Integration (CWI) series of books edited by J.P. Moreland and Frank Beckwith. Education for Human Flourishing (Spears and Loomis) and Psychology and the Spirit (Coe and Hall) have already been released, and Politics for Christians: Statecraft as Soulcraft (Beckwith) will soon be released. Below is part one of two of our interview with Moreland about the series and how to think about conceptual Christian worldview integration.

Currently, what topics are covered and which authors cover the topics in the CWI series?

Paul Nelson, Scot Minnich, Christianity and Biology.
Paul Spears, Steve Loomis, Christianity and Education.
John Woodbridge, Christianity and History.
David Jeffrey, Christianity and Literature.
Francis Beckwith, Christianity and Political Thought.
Garry DeWeese, Christianity and Philosophy.
John Coe, Todd Hall, Christianity and Psychology.
Scott Rae, Kenman Wong, Christianity, Business and Economics

Timothy Muehlhoff, Todd Lewis, Christianity and Communications.

The authors for this series were hand-picked by Frank Beckwith and me precisely because they were in a position (with respect to academic training and biblical fidelity) to do a first-rate job of presenting a fresh perspective on integration and their respective disciplines.  Each author is well-regarded and well-trained in his field and is deeply committed to Christianity in general, and the Bible in particular, as a source of knowledge of reality.

How did the CWI series come about?

I have been burdened for a long time about the lack of books on the integration of Christianity and various fields that take the Bible as a source of knowledge relevant to each field.  Too often, books on integration add a Christian veneer to the information in a discipline with the result that the scriptures do no serious cognitive work in that field.   This series will not be like that.  Each book takes scripture seriously as a source of knowledge relevant to its discipline.

The “integration of faith and learning” has become a slogan, if not a fad of sorts, for many Christian intellectuals and educators. But I get the sense that “integration” as a vision and an endeavor is far more than a slogan or fad for you and this series.

The series focuses on “conceptual integration”, the attempt to blend into an intellectually satisfying worldview the knowledge claims of historic Christianity and the Bible on the one hand, and the knowledge claims of one’s field on the other hand.  I prefer the label “the integration of biblical and disciplinary knowledge-claims, not “the integration of faith and learning,” because the latter implies that the Bible is accepted by a blind act of faith and the information from one’s discipline is actual learning, i.e., real knowledge.  The series seeks to show that the Bible does not contradict what can be shown about the nature of things from extra-biblical sources, and that the Bible provided the Christian with a rich source of knowledge that can do intellectual work in one’s field.

In its best and most sincere effort, how do Christian worldview integration endeavors with academic disciplines tend to go? How does the approach of the series differ from what is typically published in this area?  

Many such efforts take an academic discipline and leave it just as it would be understood by a secular perspective and add a Christian viewpoint that is complementary to it.  While our series agrees that this is one way to do integration, our books are more willing—no, eager!—to allow for direct interaction between the Bible and a field of study, an interaction that can be mutually reinforcing or place the Bible and a claim in a field in tension.  In such cases, we urge the Christian community, following Alvin Plantinga’s advice, to show more self-confidence that is has truth and knowledge in the Bible and does not need to protect scripture from an academic field by making its claim merely complementary to that field.

Is “integration,” ultimately, a philosophical issue with bearing upon other disciplines? How should theology contribute to the conceptual work of philosophy in the area of “Christian integration”?

Part of the very nature of philosophy is to be a second-order discipline that studies the epistemology, metaphysics, concepts, and so forth of other disciplines.  Since integration is such a second-order enterprise, then philosophy is the discipline that will ultimately be involved.  This can be seen in the fact that there are numerous books on the philosophy of x (law, psychology, biology, history) which are in the field of philosophy and written by philosophers.  It is important to see that my claims here have nothing to do with turf issues; they are simply observations about the nature of philosophy vis a vis other fields of study.  The field of theology is best employed by asking theologians to provide holistic, coherent expressions of the biblical and theological data to be factored into integration.

Christian work at the intersection of the sciences is an important area of integration, especially given the authority that scientific knowledge has within Western cultures. Are the positions of “theistic evolution” and “Christian physicalism” the result of proper integration or a failure to understand genuine integration between Christian truth and other disciplines? 


In my opinion and to over simplify a bit, theistic evolution and Christian physicalism adopt the wrong approach to integration, namely, the “complementarian approach” according to which science tells us what is real, how things happened, and so forth, and theology tells us why thing happened and why it matters.  This usually amounts to giving science cognitive authority over theology such that the scientist makes his/her pronouncements and theology must adjust accordingly.  A better approach is called the “direct-interaction view” that allows both fields an equal,  interacting place at the table.  On this view, theology may, in principle, set limits on the metaphysics, etiology, and epistemology of science, requiring Christian scientists to show that the real scientific data do not require a revision of the church’s teaching for centuries.  On this view, it is usually philosophical or methodological naturalism, not the data, that require such (an uneeded) revision.

How should Christians approach, use and present the teaching of scripture when engaging in genuine integration between what the Bible claims and what is claimed by extra-biblical sources of knowledge?

They should look for areas where biblical teaching sheds light on and/or has explanatory power with respect to an extrabiblical proposition that seems reasonable to believe.  They should also seek to remove tensions between the Bible and reasonable beliefs from extra-biblical sources, and look for areas where the latter confirm the former.  In all of this, they should have Christian self-confidence that, properly interpreted, the Bible’s teachings are not just true, but can be known to be true.  Thus, they provide a source of knowledge for doing intellectual work in one’s discipline.

Does the holistic character of discipleship and spiritual formation demand integration? If so, how and why?

We live out what we actually believe in proportion to the strength of belief, and our actions shape our beliefs.  So it is important for Christian character and action that we actually believe the things we claim to believe.  Since it is likely the case that one can change or develop one’s beliefs only indirectly, it becomes important to integrate one’s Christian beliefs/knowledge-claims with reasonable beliefs outside scripture.  This leads to personal unity and integrity where one does not split off his/her Christianity from the rest of his/her beliefs, and one is the same in public as in private.

You can learn more about the IVP Christian Worldview Integration series by going here. J.P. Moreland is the Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Biola University and Frank Beckwith is the Professor of Philosophy and Church-State Studies at Baylor University.

Interview with J.P. Moreland: The Recalcitrant Imago Dei (part two)

Posted on July 5, 2009 by - interview, jp moreland, naturalism, philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion, recalcitrant imago dei

We continue our interview with J.P. Moreland about his book, The Recalcitrant Imago Dei. In this part, J.P. shares how our view of human persons forms culture, how philosophy of religion work is helping to challenge naturalism in various areas, and how J.P. teaches philosophy.

You seem to wear multiple hats in this book as a philosopher, theologian and cultural observer. For you, how are these areas interrelated when offering an analysis of “human persons and the failure of naturalism”?

The philosopher, especially the Christian philosopher, should take a realist understanding of the imago Dei seriously. That understanding presents the philosopher with a prima facie justified case that the six features of human persons mentioned above are real and irreducible. The theologian should take the philosophical arguments seriously as an example of how to clarify the key issues and options and make crucial distinctions relevant to their resolution. The cultural observer should be careful to observe the connection between broad cultural drifts in the arena of ideas and the way human persons are depicted by the advocates of those various drifts.

In your book, you use an important Pitrim Sorokin distinction between a “sensate culture” vs. an “ideational culture.” Can you expand upon what that distinction means and why it is significant?

A sensate culture is one that believes only in the physical world that can be seen and touched. An ideational culture accepts the physical world but also believes in an unseen realm that can be known in other ways. Sensate cultures don’t last very long because they do not have the intellectual resources to sustain a vibrant cultural form of human flourishing. Sensate cultures degenerate into greed, dishonesty and conflicts over power.

For example, it is not wide of the mark to locate the fundamental intellectual cause of our current economic crisis in the ubiquitous presence of a sensate culture in the contemporary West. By contrast, an ideational culture, especially a Judeo-Christian one, allows questions like these to be asked and provides a robust answer to them: Is there meaning to life and, if so, what it is? What is right and wrong? Is God real and is there life after death? What ought the state, public education, and other key institutions do and what role ought they play in a culture conducive to human flourishing? What role ought wealth play in such a culture? None of these questions can even be asked, much less answered, from within a scientific, sensate perspective.

How can a robust view of the image of God positively shape public policy discussions?

In a reductionist culture, human persons will be identified with things such as being an animal, sexual orientation, ethnicity, which are not the most important thing about us—that we are made in zthe image of God, or so I argue in my book. In a reductionist culture, free will and rationality disappear, and are replaced with biological and sociological determinism. Along the way, personal responsibility vanishes and social engineering at the hands of cultural elites achieves hegemony. My book stands against these trends.

It seems that the homogeneous character of naturalism is actually starting to crack and break for some in Western academic circles. If that is the case, what is going on?

For twenty years or so there has been an explosion of Christian philosophy in the academy, and the overwhelming majority of Christian philosophers are theistic realists in the sense that they take their Christian theism to have ontological and epistemological implications that do intellectual work in their field. In the next decade, the prominence of Christians in philosophy will expand even more, and a backlash is sure to precipitate. Scholars in other fields, especially theology and religious studies, would do well to take note of what is happening in philosophy and seek to learn from this phenomenon. The Recalcitrant Imago Dei would be a good place to go to see an example of theistic realism at work.

There is a constant theme in a lot of your writing: Christianity is a knowledge tradition. What is the significance of this claim for how Christianity is perceived in the culture?

If Christianity were regarded as an alleged source of knowledge of reality, then its ideas would be taken seriously, put to the test, and evaluated rationally just like other alleged sources of knowledge. Knowledge, not faith, is what gives people the right to act responsibly in culture. Religious knowledge gives theological claims authority. In The Recalcitrant Imago Dei, I seek to re-establish theological claims about human persons as a reliable source of knowledge about their actual nature.

What type of philosophy courses at a university or a seminary would most benefit from this book?

Courses in philosophy of mind, comparative religion, theological anthropology, ethics (especially metaethics or end-of-life ethics), worldview comparison, and the sociology of culture would benefit from the course. Psychologists would also find much of interest here.

How do you like to teach the areas of philosophy that your book covers?

I usually begin my course by presenting the class with facts and considerations that demonstrate the broad, cultural importance of issues at the core of philosophical and theological anthropology. Then, I seek to use texts that defend various positions on those core issues and work through them carefully with the students. My book would be a good one to use in a course in philosophy of mind/action or theological anthropology. It would also be good for a course in comparative religion, since it presents and defends a Judeo-Christian understanding of the self, and treatments of the self are central issues for any religious system.

More about J.P. Moreland can be found here.

Interview with J.P. Moreland: The Recalcitrant Imago Dei (part one)

Posted on June 26, 2009 by - imago Dei, interview, introducing philosophy of religion (book), jp moreland, naturalism, philosophy of mind, recalcitrant imago dei

We are glad to announce the release of J.P. Moreland’s latest book, The Recalcitrant Imago Dei: Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism (SCM Press, 2009). J.P. is the Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Biola University. We previously interviewed him about his Consciousness and the Existence of God (Routledge, 2008). Below is part one of our interview with him about his latest book and the philosophical failure of naturalism.

In roughly 200 pages, you try to clarify, if not recapture, an emphasis on the recalcitrant imago Dei? Why this emphasis?

In its doctrine of the image of God, the Bible teaches that the human constitution has features in common with God; we are like God in important respects. Namely, we have a will, consciousness, reason, etc. If Christianity is true, one would predict that alternative worldviews whose basic entity or entities are not spiritual would find these features of the human person recalcitrant, that is, hard to explain or explain away. And that is exactly what one finds, especially in connection with philosophical naturalism. If, in the beginning was the Logos, then, I claim, it is easy to see how six features of human persons could obtain—consciousness, libertarian freedom, rationality, a unified/simple self, equal and intrinsic value, and moral action of a certain sort. But if, in the beginning were the particles, then one cannot adequately account for these features, and reductive or eliminative strategies must be employed. I argue that these strategies are a failure, and, therefore, these six features provide rebutting defeaters for naturalism and confirmation (to a degree I specify) for biblical theism.

What is the worldview of naturalism?

Naturalism has many incarnations, but if it is taken to be explanatorily superior to rival worldviews, then it may be fairly characterized according to a majority construal of it, which would be (1) a scientistic attitude, which says that all that is real is physical and that knowledge is only that which can be detected by the sciences; (2) an origins account constituted by an event-causal story explains how everything has come-to-be as a result of combinatorial processes and rearrangements of micro-physical entities to form various structurally different macro-objects, and centered on the atomic theory of matter and evolutionary biology; (3) a strictly physicalist ontology that quantifies over and only over those entities that conform to (1) and (2). I argue in the book that the naturalist ontology cannot account for real substances (besides atomic simples if such there be) or genuinely emergent, sui generis properties, especially those constitutive of the six features mentioned above.

It seems that most public policy and pop cultural discussions about what it means to be a human person are largely shaped by the offerings of the hard or soft sciences. How is your approach different and why does that matter?

The fundamental questions about the nature of human beings are these: Is consciousness real and is it non-physical? Do I have free will and, if so, what is it? How could human rationality be possible, and if it is, what does that tell us about the nature of the human person? Do I have a unified self that remains the same through change, or am I just an aggregate of parts? Do human persons have equal and high moral value, and if so, how could such a thing be the case? What is a moral action, and can human persons engage in such? None of these questions is capable of being formulated or answered by the hard and social sciences, because they are, one and all, descriptive and not prescriptive disciplines. They have nothing to say about what must be the case or what ought to be the case. The questions listed above are all philosophical and theological questions. That is how I treat them in The Recalcitrant Imago Dei, and the answers I provide require philosophical and theological evaluation.


Philosopher Howard Robinson (Budapest’s Central European University) says that the “great service” of your book is that you cumulatively demonstrate how naturalism fails to give us an accurate account of some of the most basic fundamentals of human existence. Can you further unpack the failure of naturalism?

I argue that the worldview of naturalism denies the objectivity of value, meaning in and to life, free will and responsibility, normative rationality, sameness of self through various changes, and the possibility of a ground for equal rights and moral action.

With an overreliance on the hard sciences, secularism reduces us to our brains, our wills to nerve reactions to inputs, our value to the dictates of the herd. In the process, we lose what is so special to us—our consciousness, freedom, rationality, self and value.

Naturalism has singularly failed to provide a plausible, deep analysis of human persons sufficient to account for who they are, how they can have value and purpose in life, and how they can flourish in a robust social and ethical way. As naturalist views of human persons proliferate, people turn to sex and entertainment, all centered on the satisfaction of immediate desire, as the rails upon which they run their lives. In turn, this generates passivity and all kinds of addictions.

The worldview is kept in business, intellectually, by its alleged—but non-existent—connection with physical science, and, spiritually, by anger towards God and hostility towards religion. The former is simply false—it is not science, but philosophical naturalism itself that underwrites its core intellectual commitments (and a troublesome argumentative circle is lurking in the neighborhood; to avoid this, one must provide independent epistemic and methodological arguments for adopting naturalism, but these are, in my view, extremely weak). The latter is becoming more apparent now that the resurgence of Christian philosophy has made it more difficult to justify intellectually the claim that belief in God is irrational.

Does one have to be a Christian in order to buy into your view of the human person?

One does not need to be a Christian theist to accept the analysis of human persons I defend in The Recalcitrant Imago Dei. But if that analysis is accepted, then one is obligated to offer an account concerning how human persons could be this way. In other words, one does not get a free pass in their ontology of the human person. One has to tell a broad worldview story, including a creation account, within which that ontology is intelligible and plausible.

Stay tuned for part two. More about J.P. Moreland’s work can be found here.

Interview with J.P. Moreland: Consciousness & the Existence of God

Posted on May 19, 2008 by - consciousness, interview, jp moreland, philosophy of mind, philosophy of religion

We did an interview with J.P. Moreland, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Biola University, about his just released Consciousness and the Existence of God (Routledge, 2008). Moreland has written similar items on this subject-matter in Philosophia Christi 7:2 (Winter 2005) and 1:1 (Summer 1999).

What do you attempt to do in Consciousness and the Existence of God?

The book’s central claim is that the existence of finite, irreducible consciousness (or its regular, lawlike correlation with physical states) provides strong evidence for the existence of God. I call this the Argument from Consciousness (AC). I defend AC and rebut its extant rivals.

Chapters three through five rebut naturalist rivals to AC: John Searle and contingent correlation, Timothy O’Connor and emergent necessitation, Colin McGinn and mysterian “naturalism.” Chapters six and seven rebut two additional rivals: David Skrbina and panpsychism, Philip Clayton and pluralistic emergentist monism. Given AC and the failure of its rivals, non-theists should prefer strict physicalism to emergent property dualism. In chapter eight, I argue that, contrary to what many claim, science provides virtually no evidence at all for strict physicalism. Since most physicalists claim that science is the main justification for the view, it is important to ask why strict physicalism is so popular. In chapter nine, I argue that the fear of God – “the cosmic authority problem” – is the main reason for physicalism’s popularity. I conclude that it is the relationship between dualism (substance or property) and theism, especially as formulated in AC, that accounts for physicalism’s hegemony.

How would you characterize this monograph’s contribution? Is this philosophy of mind or philosophy of religion work or both?

To date, there has been no book length treatment of this topic. Swinburne, Oppy, and others have short treatments of this argument. Further, the vast majority of treatments of irreducible property dualism and its implications take place within a prior commitment to naturalism. My book combines philosophy of mind and philosophy of religion into a book-length treatment of the problem from a theistic perspective. In that regard, it is uniqe in the literature.

What sort of discussion would you like to see sparked as a result of your book?

I want to challenge naturalists to opt for strict physicalism as a result of taking the naturalist turn because I believe that it is the most reasonable alternative for them by far and it is obviously false. I also want to challenge the naturalist employment of emergent properties as a way of harmonizing the irreducible features of various entities with a naturalist worldview. Emergent properties are the things that need to be solved, and calling them “emergent” names but does not solve anything, or so I argue.

J.P. Moreland is the Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Biola University. He is currently working on other projects at the intersection of philosophy of religion and philosophy of mind, along with developing further work and leadership with his award-winning Kingdom Triangle (Zondervan, 2007). For more of J.P. Moreland, visit www.kingdomtriangle.com

Moreland on Willard: ‘We Have Lost a Five-Star General”

Posted on May 10, 2013 by - dallas willard, jp moreland

“Dallas was a man with a deep, pervasive, penetrating intellect.  He was a Christian first and a philosopher second,” observes long-time friend and former student of Willard’s, J. P. Moreland in his tribute here. J.P. also said, “We have lost a five-star general in the armies of God, and the world is not what it was when he was among us.

Three days before Dallas passed on, J.P. spoke to him on the phone and reports this:

He was lucid, in good spirits, but so weak that he could hardly project his voice over the phone.  He knew he was dying.  I told him that I wanted to take a minute to celebrate his life and remind him of the impact for the Kingdom he had had.  Well, being the humble, unassuming person he was, Dallas would have none of this.  I told him he had to listen to me whether he wanted to or not, and he responded that he would take the praise as from the Lord, and I filled his ear with his wonderful legacy.  He closed our conversation by remarking on “what a glorious future we all have in the Kingdom,” and that was how the man approached his death.

Read more of J.P.’s tribute at his website’s blog.

Virtual Conference: Cosmic Mind, Divine Action, and Design-Engaged Theology

Posted on April 1, 2023 by - conference

Date: April 14th, 10 am (GMT-05:00) Central Time (US & Canada).

Register today!

Goal: This virtual conference draws on intelligent design theory to make the case for a God who cares—and for what that means as humans seek to join God’s redemptive mission in crucial areas of human thinking, responsibility, and life. The conference speakers and participants will center on one unifying question: “What are the implications of Intelligent Design for science-engaged theology?”

Featured Speakers

  • Steve Meyer: Evidence from Cosmology, Physics, and Origin of Life
  • Joshua Farris: Evidence for a Cosmic Mind from individual humans
  • Michael Egnor: Evidence from Neuroscience for Neurotheology
  • J.P. Moreland: The Soul, ID Research and Science-Engaged Theology
  • Charles Taliaferro: Cosmic Mind and Implications for Creation & Vocation

Learn more at designtheology.org

Philosophical Contributions to Christian Spiritual Formation: An Interview with Steve Porter

Posted on January 20, 2018 by - dallas willard, Holy Spirit, interview, Journal of Spiritual Formation and Soul Care, spiritual formation, spirituality, steve porter

We recently interviewed Steve Porter about his own journey, about philosophical contributions to Christian spiritual formation literature, and the tenth anniversary of the Journal of Spiritual Formation & Soul Care (JSFSC). Steve’s role [among other things] includes teaching theology and philosophy for Talbot School of Theology’s Institute for Spiritual Formation and Rosemead School of Psychology. He is also the Managing Editor of the JSFSC. Currently, he is also a scholar-in-residence for Biola’s Center for Christian Thought.

At this point in your journey, who or what has most shaped your own thought, sense of calling and work as an apprentice of Jesus?

​Very early in my life (around age seven) I began to have rather undeniable (even if rare) experiences of God’s presence. I had never heard of the possibility of such experiences in my church experience. While I had heard the stories of Moses’ burning bush and Elijah’s still small voice, I didn’t know those were the sorts of ways God still operated with his people. So within a Christian tradition that did not emphasize an experiential relationship with God, I came to know otherwise. I also knew that such experiences of God’s presence and love were transformational–mainly at an attitudinal level (e.g., joy). In junior high I came into contact with a pastor that helped me understand more fully what I was experiencing. But I did not encounter anyone who had a theory of how to follow Jesus in such a way that transformation was the norm. I pretty much thought you just went from experience to experience hoping for another fresh outpouring of the Spirit and that you tried really hard not to sin in the meantime.

Who helped guide you?

J. P. Moreland was the first one, I think, that began to put some theory around the spiritual life. He taught and lived it passionately, which was so helpful for me. And he kept talking about Dallas Willard, whom I really didn’t appreciate at first. I thought Spirit of the Disciplines smacked of legalism. I just wasn’t ready for it when I first read it at about twenty-years old. But eventually myself and a few other folks in graduate school got together and started doing some reading. Henri Nouwen, Richard Foster, Thomas Kelly, M. Robert Mulholland, EugenePeterson, and eventually back to Willard. Then, we thought we should hear more from some of these people so we went on to plan three spiritual formation conferences at Biola University in the mid-1990s which featured folks like Willard, Brennan Manning, James Houston, Glandion Carney, Emilie Griffin, LarryCrabb, and others. Rubbing shoulders with these folks really enlivened me to the realistic possibility of spiritual formation in Christ. And doing all of this in community with these friends was essential.

What were you coming to notice about you and the Spirit?

On my own I don’t think I would have noticed as clearly what the Spirit of God was up to. I could see him at work in the others in ways that I was blind to myself. I should also say that somewhere along the way I was exposed to “pop” psychology and good Christian psychotherapy. Being in therapy has been a discipline for me on and off for close to thirty years. While I am sure God would have his way with me without therapy, having seen God use it so powerfully in my life I can’t imagine my journey without it.

And you would eventually go study under Dallas Willard.

Yes, I did my Ph.D. at USC under Dallas’ supervision. Again, it’s hard to even imagine how I could have gotten along without my times with Dallas. He embodied the kingdom reality of God in a powerful way that I had never seen before or since. I have a book chapter entitled “The Evidential Force of Dallas Willard.” He was a force to be reckoned with because Dallas, along with Paul, was “struggling with all [Christ’s] energy that he powerfully works within me” (Col 1:29).

Academic and devotional writings on ‘spirituality’ among evangelicals tends to focus on one’s interior – e.g., ‘inner transformation.’   How has the Journal sought to address issues of Christian spirituality  in a more ‘whole-life’ sense?

Right, there has often been a perceived tension between “inner” and “outer” in Christian spirituality. Jesus was fairly insistent on the need to change the inner–cleaning the inside of the cup (Mt 23), the healthy tree produces healthy fruit (Mt 7), “For from within, out of people’s hearts…” (Mk 7), etc. I think the importance is to see that the inner life is inherently connected with the entire person and the whole of a person’s life. Perhaps we could say that the whole of life includes the inner as the pivotal dimension of the person. But it is this sort of discussion that is ripe for scholarly investigation and the Journal of Spiritual Formation & Soul Care seeks to host this sort of discussion. I will say that over our ten years of publishing we have had many articles and essays that focus on those dimensions of persons that are often neglected in contemporary evangelical spirituality. For instance, we did a special issue on the theme “Spirituality and Mission” in Spring 2013 and we had another curated discussion on the theme of “Embodied Spirituality” in Spring 2014. Articles from those issues are some of our most sought after publications. ​

The Journal recently celebrated its ten-year anniversary with the release of the Spring and Fall 2017 issue. What stands out to you about the journal’s contribution thus far?

​When I look at the twenty issues we have published over the last ten years, I think of the many e-mails we’ve received or in-person conversations expressing gratitude for this or that article. And then I think that there is a good chance the article in question wouldn’t exist apart from the existence of the Journal. There simply are not many places to publish scholarly work on Christian spirituality, let alone an evangelical approach to Christian spirituality. Over the summer I was at a small town church where one of the elders was referencing the Journal and the help that one of the articles had been for their congregation. You just don’t hear that kind of thing very often–a scholarly journal article helpful to a small town congregation?! That’s amazing. So, one thing we’ve done well, I think, is to help bridge the academy and the church.

Since its inception, the Journal has intentionally sought to foster an interdisciplinary conversation on issues of Christian spirituality. Why does that interdisciplinary orientation matter for the Journal and the ‘state of the literature’?

​One way to get at this is to realize that sanctification is a lived doctrine. Not all doctrines are lived. We don’t live the incarnation (Jesus did), we don’t live eschatology (at least not yet), we don’t live God’s omniscience (we live in light of it). But we actually live out our theology of sanctification–what I believe about sanctification makes a difference for what I do when I wake up and how I go through my day (at least it should). So that makes the study of sanctification–or Christian spirituality–an interdisciplinary affair. Part of what other disciplines get at is the existential nature of the spiritual life. Sociology investigates what spiritual life looks like in particular groups and settings. Psychology investigates the psychological dynamics of life in the Spirit. History investigates the ways of the Spirit as it has been exhibited across the lifespan of the church. Philosophy investigates the evidential basis for these sorts of claims as well as the metaphysical, epistemological, and moral matters that lie at the foundations of spiritual formation. These and other disciplines come into play to help get at the particularities of the Jesus way of life. ​

What might be some important meta-questions that philosophers should consider taking-up in the Journal’s pages, including ‘philosophy of spirituality’ questions?

​Well, first, I think there are some fairly developed philosophically-oriented views of Christian spirituality already in existence that deserve careful attention. Of course, Dallas Willard’s works have all sorts of places of entry into the discussion for philosophers. Paul Moser’s recent works on religious epistemology [see also “Christ-shaped philosophy” project] are a gold-mine for further philosophical research as are James K. A. Smith’s books.​ Lesser known are philosophers like Thomas R. Kelly and Douglas V. Steere who developed philosophically rich accounts of Quaker spirituality. When you look at philosophers such as these the meta-questions that repeatedly arise have to do with the metaphysics of spiritual reality, the nature of virtue formation, and overall accounts of soteriology that make sense of the place of spiritual formation in the Christian life.

Some examples of these questions?

For instance, what is the nature of spiritual reality and what are the conditions under which persons can come into contact with spiritual reality?; what is the best way to conceptualize the role of spiritual life in our overall understanding of the human person?; how is it that life in the Spirit brings about changes in human psychology that give rise to virtues?; what is the role of the body, mind, will, emotions, etc. in Christian virtue formation?; what sort of soteriology best explains and accounts for Christian formation in the way of Jesus?; etc. Speaking of Jesus, I should say that Jesus’ teachings are the best place for philosophers to start when it comes to understanding spirituality. What Willard did so well was take a teaching of Jesus and really get to the bottom of it in terms of the way of life in the kingdom he prescribed.

By design, the JSFSC has encouraged Christian philosophers to contribute to its pages. As a historical snapshot for our readers, what has tended to be the focus of those articles?

​O.k., here is a snapshot of some Christian philosophers who have contributed to the journal. Mike Austin (Eastern Kentucky University) wrote an article on sports as a type of spiritual exercise. J.P. Moreland (Talbot) has written on Willard’s ontology of the person and its implications for formation. Dan Speak (Loyola Marymount University) responded to an article written by Willard on the will and the flesh. Gregg Ten Elshof (Biola University) addressed Willard’s interpretation of the Beatitudes. Paul Moser (Loyola University Chicago) wrote an essay on philosophical reflection and formation. And Brandon Rickabaugh (Baylor University) addressed knowledge of God as a type of knowledge by acquaintance. These and other contributions to the journal by philosophers are some of our best publications.

What are some common areas of spirituality, spiritual formation or questions of soul care that merit greater philosophical attention?

​I think any question of Christian spirituality can benefit from a philosophical approach. For instance, marshaling evidence for various claims of Christian formation is urgently needed. I know folks who try to argue for the importance of spiritual direction in their local churches and they just get eaten alive because they do not have well-formed biblical, theological, and philosophical arguments. Alternatively, looking carefully at the evidential base for spiritual principles and practices (e.g., certain forms of contemplative prayer) can bring about much-needed qualifications as well as an appropriate intellectual humility to proponents of these practices. Whether it’s a stereotype or not, it does seem that many persons involved in spiritual formation are driven by their own experience and therefore they often appeal to their own and others’ experience. But that only goes so far and it never goes far enough. Philosophers, for better and for worse, bring a more objective, logical mind to these questions. While that can lead to an unhealthy critical attitude, it can also lead to a more grounded and nuanced understanding of Christian spirituality.

Is there one common area that merits greater philosophical attention?

If I were to pick one, it would be the nature of the Divine-human relationship. For instance, a philosophical conceptualization of how human minds interact with the Divine mind is sorely needed, including the criteria whereby one can know that God is influencing one’s thoughts (see 1 Cor 2–3). Jesus seemed keenly aware of the presence and will of his Father (e.g., see John 8:29). If we are going to imitate Jesus we need to imitate the way of life he led with his Father by the Spirit. But, unfortunately, many folks either don’t think about the nature of God’s presence at all or, what might be worse, they think of it operating like magic or in overly romantic categories (i.e., a felt sense of God’s love). The other prevalent view is to reduce God’s presence to beliefs one has about God. There is simply a conceptual desert for many when it comes to thinking about life in interactive relationship with God. Philosophers could really help fill in this absence with well-formed biblical and theological concepts. 

You have a Special Issue coming out in Fall 2018 on the theme, “Christian Spiritual Formation: Teaching and Practice.” What might be some philosophical questions/interests to be addressed in that theme?

​This special issue [deadline for CFP is February 28th!] is particularly focused on what can be done and has been done regarding spiritual formation in educational settings–particularly the church and university. Of course, there has been a lot of work in virtue epistemology and virtue ethics on the question of whether virtue can be taught. This goes all the way back to Plato’s Meno but more recently Robert Adam’s A Theory of Virtue ends with a chapter on whether virtue can be taught. Linda Zagzebski’s recent Exemplarist Moral Theory and Nancy Snow’s work is relevant here as well. All of this to say, this special issue is crying out for some submissions on issues related to the teaching of virtue. What role does direct instruction on the virtues have in virtue formation and formation by the Spirit? What role does exposure to exemplars have? How about spiritual practices? There is also a lot of empirical, psychological work on virtue acquisition that is relevant here and much of that work has been profitably discussed by philosophers (see, e.g., Christian Miller’s recentbooks). It would be wonderful to have some submissions engaging this material.

Dallas Willard’s philosophical and theological assumptions are an important pathway into certain aspects of the Journal’s contributions. For those interested in the ‘Willardian corpus’ and its significance, what do you see as some yet-to-be-fully-realized contributions from Dallas’s insights applied to issues of Christian spirituality?

​Great question! First, I think we need to make sure we understand Willard’s own views. I often find that my first take on what Willard is saying is completely wrong. My second take is closer to what he actually held, but it really takes three or four approaches to Willard to get at the nuanced way he addresses these issues. Even still, I sometimes worry whether I am understanding him correctly. So that is a project in and of itself. What actually is Willard’s view of this or that aspect of spiritual formation? After that is clear, we need folks to develop some of Dallas’ insights more fully. Critical evaluation and emendation is needed as is developing the arguments for some of Dallas’ views more fully than he did. Then there is the work of implications.

What might be a Willardian philosophical foundation to build on?

This all has to start with Willard’s realist epistemology and that includes his understanding of concepts. Philosophia Christi published an article in vol. 1, no. 2 in which Dallas offers his clearest presentation of these issues. The first and last couple of chapters of Knowing Christ Today apply this realism to his understanding of faith and knowledge of God/Christ. All of that is great fodder for further philosophical reflection. Then one should turn to Willard’s understanding of the nature of God and God’s kingdom, Jesus as providing access to and a way of life within God’s kingdom, and finally how it is that intentional engagement with such a way of life is transformational. I think all of this is ripe for further philosophical analysis. Willard is one of those philosophers the investigation of whom brings about great rewards. Also, sometime in this current year Willard’s posthumous book, The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge, will be published by Routledge. This book is a history of 20th century ethics with an eye to the failure of moral theory to ground moral knowledge and a brief positive case for the possibility of moral knowledge. All of this is foundational to Willard’s work in spiritual formation as it puts forward views that provide the basis for his sort of optimism and confidence regarding knowledge of spiritual life.