Latest / Spiritual Hot Sauce / "What is a Soul? Dr. Joshua Ryan Farris Answering Questions You Didn’t Know You Had” Ep#24

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"What is a Soul? Dr. Joshua Ryan Farris Answering Questions You Didn’t Know You Had” Ep#24 · Spiritual Hot Sauce

0:00
Chris Jones: What is the soul?
0:01
Chris Jones: If you have a soul, how did you get it?
0:04
Chris Jones: Is consciousness everlasting or does it have an expiration date?
0:08
Chris Jones: Today we tackle the anatomy of self with an expert in the field, Dr.
0:12
Chris Jones: Joshua Ryan Ferris.
0:14
Chris Jones: We are leaving the shallows on this one.
0:17
Chris Jones: Into the deep we go.
0:19
Chris Jones: Welcome.
0:20
Chris Jones: I'm Chris Jones.
0:22
Chris Jones: This is where believers and skeptics alike are invited to embark on a journey of faith, philosophy, and life from a different perspective.
0:30
Chris Jones: Whether we are joined by an insightful guest or we just jump into the deep end, this exploration promises to challenge us all.
0:38
Chris Jones: Are we getting it right?
0:40
Chris Jones: This is Spiritual Hot Sauce.
0:50
Chris Jones: Today I'm joined by Dr.
0:51
Chris Jones: Joshua Ryan Ferris, and his accolades are far too long to mention in full.
0:57
Chris Jones: But let's hit the highlights.
0:58
Chris Jones: He holds a PhD in theology and philosophy from the University of Bristol, has authored or co-authored 11 books, including The Creation of Self, A Case for the Soul, and Introduction to Theological Anthropology, and has published over 50 peer-reviewed articles on everything from consciousness to the afterlife.
1:19
Chris Jones: As a leading authority on the nature of the soul, he is the perfect guest for what we are diving into today: the soul and the anatomy of self.
1:28
Chris Jones: I couldn't think of a better person to explore this with other than Dr.
1:32
Chris Jones: Joshua Ryan Fair.
1:34
Chris Jones: Joshua, welcome to the sauce.
1:36
SPEAKER_01: Hey Chris, good to be with you.
1:38
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for inviting me.
1:39
SPEAKER_01: I appreciate it.
1:39
SPEAKER_01: I've enjoyed your your show.
1:41
SPEAKER_01: I I I really have.
1:43
SPEAKER_01: You come at questions in a kind of a different way, so I really appreciate that.
1:47
Chris Jones: Well, thank you.
1:48
Chris Jones: And I'm looking forward to this.
1:49
Chris Jones: So before we dive in, I'd like to establish a couple of definitions.
1:53
Chris Jones: These terms have been kind of convoluted over time.
1:56
Chris Jones: So I want to distinguish between eternal and everlasting.
2:01
Chris Jones: Eternal being, it's always been, it will always be, it had no beginning, it had no end, it pre-existed before time, before the universe.
2:09
Chris Jones: And the universe can't be eternal because it had a starting point.
2:13
Chris Jones: So even if it lasts forever, it can only be everlasting.
2:17
Chris Jones: So I wanted to establish these definitions because they will significantly impact our discussion regarding the nature of the soul.
2:25
Chris Jones: Let's start there.
2:26
Chris Jones: Without the origins, just tell me kind of a definition of what soul, what a soul is.
2:33
SPEAKER_01: Well, there's certain characteristics that we can talk about when we talk about the soul.
2:37
SPEAKER_01: There's certain predicates or properties that we can refer to.
2:41
SPEAKER_01: The way I come at a soul is a soul is it's a term, a rigid designation for using very very loose language, a thing or what philosophers call a substance.
2:56
SPEAKER_01: You know, a soul is it's a term that often is thrown around and used by different people to mean different things.
3:02
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes a soul is used to refer to a sentimental set of properties or a sentimental kind of religious kind of internal life.
3:12
SPEAKER_01: So you you see a lot of soul language throughout even recent history referring to music, a certain kind of music, a certain kind of food, or a certain kind of religious aspiration.
3:26
SPEAKER_01: Typically, though, in the history of philosophy and theology and the way that I'm using it, I use it in a more technical sense, right?
3:34
SPEAKER_01: In a more specific sense to refer to what philosophers call, again, a substance of a thing.
3:40
SPEAKER_01: A substance is something philosophers define as the kind of thing that exists by itself, and it bears certain properties, it has certain events.
3:52
SPEAKER_01: A soul is a reference or a designator for the kind of thing that has thoughts and experiences, maybe emotional states, ideas, concepts that are predicated of it or said of it.
4:09
SPEAKER_01: It's the thing that holds them together, you might say, or binds them together.
4:14
SPEAKER_01: And I think, you know, we could take several thought experiments and or arguments, and I would say that when you begin with kind of thinking or what philosophers call mental events, if mental events are had by something or owned by something, it's owned by something that is arguably other than my body or other than my brain.
4:35
SPEAKER_01: It is something other than that.
4:37
SPEAKER_01: It is a thing that, as Descartes would call it, or has called it in some of his writings, a thing that thinks.
4:45
SPEAKER_01: Later philosophers of today would say something more like, it's a thing that experiences.
4:50
SPEAKER_01: It's a thing that has experiences, it's a thing that binds those experiences together.
4:56
SPEAKER_01: And if those experiences themselves are mental events, they're something other than the brain, they're not reducible or identical to the brain, but something other than the brain, then if there is a thing there that has to have them to make sense of them, then that's what oftentimes many contemporary philosophers refer to as the soul.
5:17
SPEAKER_01: And it's something that at least more traditionally, a lot of philosophers and theologians throughout history in varying ways would refer to as a soul or think of as a soul.
5:28
Chris Jones: Well, now that you've kind of introduced the soul and you brought up some other things, let's dive into the ideas of where it comes from in and the different ways you can look at it.
5:38
Chris Jones: So the first one is a Platonist view.
5:41
Chris Jones: And I don't think it's very popular now, but if you would open that up and tell us about what a Platonist is.
5:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, kind of a loaded question, a little bit, but I I would consider myself a Platonist of a sort.
5:56
SPEAKER_01: I would consider, of course, uh Descartes' views something like the Platonic view.
6:00
SPEAKER_01: It's it's at least I've called it this at least before.
6:03
SPEAKER_01: I think it's it's within the Platonic family, you might say.
6:07
SPEAKER_01: So it's a family of views, you might say.
6:09
SPEAKER_01: The Platonic view is something like this.
6:12
SPEAKER_01: There are these ideas that l that exist somewhere out there in the Platonic heaven, and you as a as a soul or as an immaterial thing have access to the Platonic Heaven as an immaterial thing.
6:26
SPEAKER_01: You are that immaterial thing.
6:28
SPEAKER_01: In other words, you are not your body or your brain or the different parts that comprise your body, or your animal, you might say some people call it an animal, like this fleshy bit right here is is an animal organism or a biological organism.
6:45
SPEAKER_01: Uh the Platonic view would say something like, roughly speaking, something like, I am, I am my soul that has a body.
6:52
SPEAKER_01: I am not, strictly speaking, identical to my body.
6:56
SPEAKER_01: I'm not identified with my body.
6:58
SPEAKER_01: In a strict sense, my body is not me.
7:01
SPEAKER_01: And the parts of my body or the properties or the events of my body don't make up what I am fundamentally or essentially.
7:08
SPEAKER_01: They don't make up what I am or who I am.
7:11
SPEAKER_01: Who I am is what my my soul is, or is identical to my soul.
7:16
SPEAKER_01: And it's that thing that transcends the natural realm that we live in, or the even the physical realm that we live in and exist in and experience through.
7:28
SPEAKER_01: We have access to.
7:29
SPEAKER_01: Right.
7:30
SPEAKER_01: And through it, we have access to the other realm, the higher realm that Plato talks about, the the the unseen realm.
7:37
SPEAKER_01: You know, when Paul sometimes Paul uses some some platonic sound, at least Platonic sounding language, when he talks about looking through a glass dimly, we don't quite see yet.
7:49
SPEAKER_01: There's something on the other side that only the soul can access, as it were, or at least soul can access via supernatural knowledge or f or faith or something of the sort.
8:03
Chris Jones: But from the Platonist view, what what does the origin of the soul look like?
8:08
Chris Jones: Because I've heard, and correct me if I'm wrong, that it existed before this kind of an exp an eternal self.
8:16
Chris Jones: Is that correct?
8:17
SPEAKER_01: Aaron Powell Yeah.
8:18
SPEAKER_01: So Plato seems to, in different dialogues, affirm well whatever he I don't whatever he did affirm, I for sure.
8:27
SPEAKER_01: I'm not I'm not entirely sure, but he seems to indicate that he affirms something like a soul that preexists.
8:35
SPEAKER_01: So in different dialogues, he'll talk about this idea that that ideas themselves are something that are eternal in themselves.
8:46
SPEAKER_01: And souls are the kinds of things that have access to those things.
8:51
SPEAKER_01: And so he seems to think that souls uh existed even prior to generation or the bodily generation.
9:01
SPEAKER_01: Because to exist in a bodily generation, we we couldn't our our our bodies couldn't have access to the kinds of ideas that um Plato's after, the the kind of the eternal ideas, the the, you know, the abstract forms.
9:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
9:16
SPEAKER_01: These ideas that are out there that that that don't technically they don't exist here, they exist out there somewhere.
9:24
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, uh Plato affirms something, I think, like a pre-existence view in certain ways we have some cases of that in in tradition, even in the Christian tradition, and like Origen uh seems to affirm something like the Platonic pre-existence view of the soul, that the soul just pre-existed the body, that it didn't come into existence with the body, or it wasn't generated by the body.
9:45
Chris Jones: Aaron Powell When we we say pre-existed the body, could that mean in an eternal state before the universe, or could that mean it existed before the body, but not necessarily before time?
9:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
9:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, good question.
9:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
9:58
SPEAKER_01: So there could be different senses of what it means to pre-exist.
10:01
Chris Jones: So in a traditional Platonist view, did he believe that we were in the eternal state before time, in some sense of ourselves, or after that?
10:10
SPEAKER_01: Aaron Powell Yeah.
10:11
SPEAKER_01: I think I think he did affirm something like a pre-existence in before time or outside of time, an autemporal time.
10:20
Chris Jones: Aaron Powell Do you think maybe that's why it fell out of vogue?
10:24
Chris Jones: It's not quite as popular as it once was.
10:26
Chris Jones: Although it seems to still have an influence, doesn't it?
10:29
SPEAKER_01: Aaron Powell You know, yeah, it does.
10:31
SPEAKER_01: I we we were putting together an academic collection on the origin of soul, a conversation, and I was literally I was trying to find somebody who could give a kind of rigorous defense of some kind of pre-existence view.
10:43
SPEAKER_01: And I was struggling to find someone.
10:46
SPEAKER_01: Now it is coming back in vogue, though.
10:48
SPEAKER_01: I think there were there was an OUP book that was put out recently, and actually one of my friends is like really interested in a kind of pre-existence view, maybe not the eternal pre-existence view, but something like a pre-existence view where the soul just pre-existed the body in some other time, whatever that means.
11:08
SPEAKER_01: So one of my friends is actually really intrigued by that idea now.
11:13
SPEAKER_01: I'm open to it.
11:14
SPEAKER_01: I I but it certainly has fallen on hard times.
11:17
SPEAKER_01: It hasn't been the kind of dominant position within Christian history as I'm aware.
11:23
SPEAKER_01: Most affirmed some kind of non-preexistence view, a kind of creationist view that the soul was just created in the body or something like that as it came into existence.
11:33
Chris Jones: Let's move on to that.
11:34
Chris Jones: So there is the creationist view, and we're not talking about the Big Bang.
11:38
Chris Jones: We're talking about the Big Bang of self, right?
11:40
Chris Jones: The divine spark.
11:42
Chris Jones: So if you would open that up and tell us about this creationist view of us.
11:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
11:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
11:48
SPEAKER_01: So the creationist view says very simply or crudely, you might say, it's the view that God kind of just directly and immediately creates the soul or causes the soul to exist in the body, maybe at the time of gestation or or or or conception or or something of the sort.
12:06
SPEAKER_01: God just kind of creates it and it is, right?
12:08
Chris Jones: Aaron Ross Powell, and that idea, is it possible that they they have to have one another to exist?
12:15
Chris Jones: Is it that kind of an idea that they can't be staggered, they have to happen immediately at the same time, but whenever that life begins, is that the idea behind that?
12:23
SPEAKER_01: Aaron Powell Yeah, I think many would would understand it that way.
12:26
SPEAKER_01: Certainly someone like Thomas Aquinas would understand it that way.
12:29
SPEAKER_01: He would say something like, you know, the soul couldn't exist without the body, the form is the is the form of matter, and and so they have to exist together in some sort of composite relation.
12:40
SPEAKER_01: And so uh the soul, when it's created, it's created necessarily in the or as the form of the matter in this kind of arranged marriage.
12:50
SPEAKER_01: So you don't have for many, for many Christians who are creationists, many of them would affirm that it exists in the body because the soul is necessarily existing with the body or depends on the body or depends on the brain in some way.
13:03
SPEAKER_01: And so God creates it that way.
13:05
SPEAKER_01: It just is designed that way.
13:08
SPEAKER_01: You don't have unembodied souls, even if you might have disembodied souls, so you might make a distinction between unembodiment and disembodiment.
13:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
13:18
Chris Jones: Okay.
13:19
Chris Jones: So then you have the transitionism.
13:22
Chris Jones: Is that how I did I say that right?
13:24
Chris Jones: The the genetic view.
13:26
Chris Jones: Could you uh tell us about that?
13:28
Chris Jones: Open that one up.
13:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
13:30
SPEAKER_01: So the Traducian view says something like this: the soul is generated in some way via some kind of process, maybe a material process, physical process, or maybe some other sort of immaterial process.
13:50
SPEAKER_01: Depending on who you're looking at, somebody like William Shedd, the reformed theologian, he affirmed a very kind of exotic view of the origin of the soul, a kind of traducianism where he says that there are these mental events, and when these mental events occur in procreation between them the husband and the wife, there is a kind of generation of you might think of it as kind of soulish.
14:17
SPEAKER_01: I think you you'd almost necessarily.
14:26
SPEAKER_01: One way to think about it, the way that Shad seems to talk about is it's like an atom, right, that experiences this kind of event of sh of splitting.
14:36
SPEAKER_01: Where we know atoms split and we can we can we can split atoms.
14:40
SPEAKER_01: So the soul might be something like an atom that splits.
14:44
SPEAKER_01: It splits into two parts where the the the the the mother and the father give off certain not just genetic material, right?
14:53
SPEAKER_01: They give off immaterial that immaterial material.
14:58
SPEAKER_01: It's it's probably not material, but they give off some immaterial events or mental events that are then conjoined that create this new life, that generate or generate a new life.
15:08
SPEAKER_01: They're not actually creating.
15:10
SPEAKER_01: I mean, at least most traditional traducians would say that at one level, at least God creates at least one, if not two, necessarily creates one, if not two, souls that then within themselves have the kind of mechanisms or the the potencies or the powers to generate other souls via this procreative process.
15:32
SPEAKER_01: And and so you can already begin to see maybe the appeal of that view.
15:37
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
15:37
SPEAKER_01: Sure.
15:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
15:38
Chris Jones: It reminds me of kind of how there's certain Native Americans and almost Confucianism that believes that it's not proprietary, the soul, that it is in the bloodline, and you're just the manifestation of it currently.
15:54
Chris Jones: And as you connect and you make life, it continues on through that vein.
15:59
Chris Jones: So it's a little different.
16:00
Chris Jones: So it's not the same, but it it dare share that idea that we have the ability to, in some way, a divine spark in us, or something like that.
16:08
SPEAKER_01: Aaron Ross Powell, yeah.
16:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's right.
16:10
SPEAKER_01: Something like that.
16:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there is some kind of d divine spark or some potentiality, which is really quite attractive at one level.
16:19
SPEAKER_01: It's quite fascinating.
16:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that God would give us that kind of power.
16:25
SPEAKER_01: It's not a power creation ex nihilo.
16:27
SPEAKER_01: I I mean, I think we would deny that as at least Orthodox Christians, we would say that that can't be, right?
16:33
SPEAKER_01: It's not creation ex nihilo, but it's it is some kind of shared power, procreative power that God gives us, grants to his image bearers or something of the sort.
16:44
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
16:45
Chris Jones: So and the next one I want to talk about is off the beaten path here, but it pertains, and that's the Buddhist view, and that is there is no soul, that is an illusion, that is a collective consciousness, and we are just experiencing kind of ourselves in the grand scheme of things, kind of riding the wave of and through time and consciousness, we're like the sea foam.
17:07
Chris Jones: And as we collectively get better and better, we find our way to nirvana.
17:11
Chris Jones: So it's it's says that there is no self.
17:15
Chris Jones: Do you what's your thoughts on that?
17:17
SPEAKER_01: Aaron Ross Powell, yeah, this view is actually has yeah, it has a prominent history.
17:22
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of elusive to it's hard to talk about this view.
17:26
SPEAKER_01: It's it's elusive when you start talking about it.
17:28
SPEAKER_01: Aaron Powell It is.
17:29
SPEAKER_01: It is very different.
17:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
17:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
17:32
SPEAKER_01: And and it's it's gaining some traction, I think.
17:35
SPEAKER_01: It's becoming more in vogue.
17:37
SPEAKER_01: And well, I think it leans into materialist.
17:40
Chris Jones: I think they're kind of a fellow kindred spirit there almost, if you'll be kind.
17:47
Chris Jones: You know what I mean?
17:47
Chris Jones: There's a connection there.
17:48
SPEAKER_01: Aaron Powell Yeah, yeah.
17:50
SPEAKER_01: I think so.
17:51
SPEAKER_01: I think you know, one of the contemporary I I don't know if he would call his view Buddhist exactly, but I think he would affer he does affirm a no-self view of consciousness, and that there is one one singular consciousness, and that singular consciousness we can't look directly at.
18:11
SPEAKER_01: As soon as we see it, if we do gain a glimpse of it, maybe through psychedelic means or something, who when we turn away, we forget what we see.
18:20
SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot of like uh new age, well, I guess I call it new age, new the new new age.
18:25
SPEAKER_01: It's coming back in different forms now.
18:27
SPEAKER_01: It's really interesting to see.
18:29
SPEAKER_01: But you know, Bernardo Castrup is is one of those guys defending something like this view, the no-self view.
18:36
SPEAKER_01: There is no substantial self.
18:38
SPEAKER_01: There is consciousness, but that consciousness itself is even, it's elusive.
18:43
SPEAKER_01: We have, he calls it like alter consciousnesses.
18:46
SPEAKER_01: That you are, if you think of if you think of the psychological problem of alter states of con consciousness or disassociative states of consciousness.
18:55
SPEAKER_01: You are that of the one consciousness.
18:58
SPEAKER_01: You just happen to be in this mode of existence right now, or something like that, where you have your own altered state.
19:05
SPEAKER_01: But it's really just an altered state of the one unifying bigger consciousness that you're a part of.
19:10
SPEAKER_01: You're not just a part, you're an aspect of it.
19:13
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
19:14
Chris Jones: Yeah.
19:15
Chris Jones: All right.
19:15
Chris Jones: Well, let's move on then to the final one I know, and that's a materialist.
19:19
Chris Jones: And that's just your neurons are firing and creating this feeling of identity.
19:24
Chris Jones: But once the physical man lays down and is gone, then so is the experience.
19:30
SPEAKER_01: Aaron Powell Yeah.
19:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:32
SPEAKER_01: So there's the yeah, this there's the materialist view that denies that there is a soul.
19:37
SPEAKER_01: Like there is there is no soul.
19:39
SPEAKER_01: Then you have materialist options about, well, what does it mean to be me or you?
19:44
SPEAKER_01: What is personal identity?
19:46
SPEAKER_01: How do we make sense of that?
19:47
SPEAKER_01: So some materialists would say, well, somebody like Shoemaker or something, Sydney Shoemaker would say that I am my brain or something, something of the sort.
19:56
SPEAKER_01: The most likely material thing that I could be would be my brain.
20:00
SPEAKER_01: Where my brain is the kind of central system that controls the rest of my body, or something like that.
20:07
SPEAKER_01: Or others would say something more along the lines of, no, I'm just a really complex biological organism.
20:14
SPEAKER_01: I'm an animal.
20:15
SPEAKER_01: I, in other words, this has become more popular today.
20:19
SPEAKER_01: I am my animal.
20:20
SPEAKER_01: I am a human animal, just a distinct, individualized biological animal that I am right here.
20:27
SPEAKER_01: This is where I'm at.
20:28
SPEAKER_01: This is where I'm at.
20:29
SPEAKER_01: I am, I am this biological animal, this instantiation of what it means to be a human natural kind or something like that.
20:37
SPEAKER_01: I am an instantiation of this human kind, so I am an animal.
20:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and you certainly have certainly recent history, even more Christians have come around to this view and become it's become more prominent.
20:51
SPEAKER_01: And actually a lot of people have started accepting this in recent history, and that's interesting in and of itself.
20:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
20:59
SPEAKER_01: Why are people I think there's been a I think there's a reaction now to it, but I think there has been it's been quite in vogue for a little while now.
21:08
Chris Jones: Aaron Ross Powell Do you feel like that's the rise kind of in scientism of the idea that it it has to be a materialist thing for us to realize it?
21:18
SPEAKER_01: Trevor Burrus Yeah, I do think that has a lot to do with it.
21:21
SPEAKER_01: I think there's a large contribution from scientism, strong or weak scientism, and this overwhelming impression that the empirical method, some sort of strict empirical method is all that we have in terms of knowledge or how we can arrive at knowledge.
21:37
SPEAKER_01: And so there's these historical forces, intellectual forces come in kind of coming in and shaping how it is that we how it is that we see the world and how it is that we perceive the world.
21:50
SPEAKER_01: So I think, yeah, I think certainly scientism has been quite prominent in in in recent history, intellectual history and in in various disciplines, academic disciplines, and so and that's even crept into Christian theological circles where it's kind of dominated how kind of the authority or the auspices of how it is that we construct our theology.
22:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
22:15
SPEAKER_01: So I think, yeah, I think that's right.
22:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, definitely.
22:18
Chris Jones: So but at the same time, materialists seem to kind of wave a white flag when it comes to consciousness, which leads me into something I talk about frequently on the podcast, and that is our compass, I call it.
22:32
Chris Jones: And the compass is meant to help us get through adversity in life and how we choose and we talk about life being a marathon and not a sprint.
22:40
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
22:41
Chris Jones: But it it speaks to what I would call our inner duality, our battle within.
22:47
Chris Jones: And I say that North represents our emotions, which are our wants, our needs, our desires, our fears.
22:53
Chris Jones: And emotions don't understand investment of long-term behaviors.
22:57
Chris Jones: They want immediate gratification.
22:59
Chris Jones: And the opposite of that is our center, our essence, our will.
23:03
Chris Jones: It's how we choose, and we use logic.
23:05
Chris Jones: And we know that doing hard things now gets us to a better place later.
23:10
Chris Jones: And I think this kind of speaks to me anyway, our physical person, man, and our soul, our essence.
23:20
Chris Jones: And there is a tension.
23:21
Chris Jones: There is this, there's fight within for the control.
23:25
Chris Jones: But at the same time, it reminds me of kind of like tectonic plates, you know, how they hit each other and there's this friction, and when they move, there's an atmospheric spark because there's this light.
23:36
Chris Jones: So I can't help but feel or think that that tension between our physical man and our soul is what creates that spark of that tension that we call consciousness.
23:48
Chris Jones: So if you would weigh in on that, I would love to hear your opinion.
23:52
SPEAKER_02: Hmm.
23:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
23:56
SPEAKER_01: Well, I think that there certainly could be some kind of mind-on-brain dependence relationship that is necessary for at least maybe for our functional consciousness.
24:12
SPEAKER_01: How do we understand what the mind is?
24:14
SPEAKER_01: I think the the the mind is something that if we're following someone like Richard Fumerton, the epistemologist, he would say that there is something about, I mean, you could think of it as common sense or intuition or what or the like.
24:28
SPEAKER_01: Immediately upon reflection of our own mental states or our own consciousness, there are arguably two sets of properties that are, or events that are occurring that we have some kind of access to, or even we we know, at least intuitively, we know these things, because we know the physical by way of uh as a thing that is kind of mediated by way of concepts that we have access to in our own minds or our own mental events.
25:00
SPEAKER_01: And the knowledge that we do have of it, although we do have it, is is mediated.
25:06
SPEAKER_01: It's still mediated, but it's mediated by something that seems to be more immediate.
25:12
SPEAKER_01: The immediate thing that is there in our mental events are, well, just the mental events themselves.
25:19
SPEAKER_01: So Richard Fermanton, this sort of empiricist, he argues that in our phenomenal experiences, we know there are two types of properties or two types of events immediately in our kind of epistemic kind of wherewithal or cognitive structure.
25:37
SPEAKER_01: We phenomenally experience the world, and the phenomenal experience of the world is a phenomenal experience first and foremost, or immediate, of the world that is mediated through the phenomenal frame, as it were.
25:56
SPEAKER_01: So if that's right, then we're in this kind of question, we're we're confronted with a kind of question about what it is that we're actually talking about.
26:05
SPEAKER_01: Formerton doesn't want to give an answer to what it is that we're talking about.
26:08
SPEAKER_01: Being a good empiricist, he just wants to do epistemology.
26:12
SPEAKER_01: So he doesn't want to say anything about the metaphysics of the thing itself.
26:16
SPEAKER_01: But he says we're in this kind of epistemic position where we have these two different types of events, one mental event and and the other physical events.
26:28
SPEAKER_01: And we know the physical events, but we only know it mediately, mediated by something.
26:34
SPEAKER_01: And we can we can infer its existence by way of the m immediate knowledge that we have of it, and we can kind of put it through these sort of rings and tests and empirical tests, and we can study it.
26:49
SPEAKER_01: And but at one level, if there is anything beyond the kind of the empirical itself, we can't be sure that we have direct access to it.
27:01
SPEAKER_01: So, in other words, so this brings us to a kind of problem insofar as if we're trying to get at the mental events, the mental events that we have immediate access to, and then we're trying to, we realize there are these physical events, these physical events that we have access to, but only mediated by the kind of immaterial or the phenomenal experiences, the mental events themselves.
27:28
SPEAKER_01: If we're trying to make sense of these mental events by way of the physical, then it seems we're in a kind of quandary.
27:38
SPEAKER_01: So then we have to ask the question, well, what kind of physical event would make sense of or undergird or explain the mental events themselves?
27:49
SPEAKER_01: And so then we would have to ask that further question, well, what kind of thing would that be?
27:54
SPEAKER_01: And and uh I think, I think there is no kind of physical thing that we could actually point to and find that would do justice as the kind of ground or explanation, the the thing that would make sense of the mental events themselves.
28:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
28:13
Chris Jones: I got a bit abstract there, but uh come back at me with your thoughts because what I'm hearing is is consciousness is is obviously not tangible, and it's it kind of comes from something else, and we're just simply not aware of what it truly is.
28:28
Chris Jones: And it's hard to nail down of what it is, but it is self.
28:33
Chris Jones: It is our experience, it's how we experience the external and the internal.
28:36
Chris Jones: Yeah.
28:37
Chris Jones: It am I correct?
28:39
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's right.
28:40
SPEAKER_01: It is, it is.
28:41
SPEAKER_01: It's how we experience the internal and the external.
28:44
SPEAKER_01: What it is that we internally experience, what it is that we have access to.
28:49
SPEAKER_01: Some philosophers would call like the distinctive kind of feature of consciousness is this kind of private character that nobody else really has access to, or at least no direct access to.
29:04
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you can look at kind of brain maps, you could look at brain maps of even my brain, and you could you could infer certain kinds of information about my mental and emotional states from that based upon a long history in neuroscience of studying these things and acquiring information about what different patterns in the brains uh brain does and and and what kind of emotional states it correlates with, right?
29:30
SPEAKER_01: So you could kind of maybe map it out in kind of an inferential way, but you don't have like, you don't when you look at a brain map, you're not seeing my my mind directly.
29:42
SPEAKER_01: You're not having access to my mind directly or the my the mental events themselves directly.
29:47
Chris Jones: That was true, neuroscience could tell us exactly what consciousness is, but they can't.
29:51
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
29:52
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
29:53
Chris Jones: Yeah, that's right.
29:55
Chris Jones: Okay.
29:56
Chris Jones: All right.
29:56
Chris Jones: So let's let's get into self versus personas because we talk about the social construct.
30:01
Chris Jones: Yeah.
30:02
Chris Jones: And that I've said in the past that a social construct's nothing more than an overgrown market.
30:07
Chris Jones: It's become so uh it's so complex.
30:11
Chris Jones: But essentially that's what we do.
30:13
Chris Jones: We develop these personas and how we interact with the market, and we go to the social construct and we are part of it, and we develop these personas, but our true self, I think we get confused of who we truly are.
30:25
Chris Jones: And we end up feeling like or thinking that these personas we develop to work or do the things we do in the social construct are us.
30:35
Chris Jones: However, I think that's kind of what Jesus had talked about when he was talking about the Levite and the Levite priest in the parable of the Good Samaritan, that they were kind of NPCs, these religious nonplayer characters, that they were just playing the personas and their roles.
30:50
Chris Jones: But it's the Good Samaritan that comes out of the persona from self and chooses to help based on their own need.
30:58
Chris Jones: Would you say that is from their consciousness, or would you say that is from their true identity, their true self?
31:03
Chris Jones: Aaron Powell Yeah, yeah, yeah.
31:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
31:06
SPEAKER_01: That's an that's an interesting question.
31:08
SPEAKER_01: I'm I've never been asked that kind of question.
31:12
SPEAKER_01: It's a spiritual hot sauce, man.
31:14
SPEAKER_01: My brain doesn't act normal.
31:16
Chris Jones: It's different.
31:18
SPEAKER_01: So we're talking about these NPCs that Jesus is interacting with.
31:22
Chris Jones: The nonplayer characters.
31:23
Chris Jones: Yeah, where he says the the robbers beat the man and they leave him for dead and they take everything.
31:28
Chris Jones: And then it says a Levite and a Levite priest.
31:31
Chris Jones: They see the man, but they pass by.
31:33
Chris Jones: And I had said in a previous episode that they are religious nonplayer characters.
31:39
Chris Jones: They're simply in the social construct, fulfilling their personas or their roles, but it is the good Samaritan that stops and helps.
31:47
Chris Jones: But he had a place to go to as well.
31:49
Chris Jones: So he also had a persona.
31:51
Chris Jones: But he stepped out of this character in the social construct to choose from self, to actually choose humanity over the social construct.
32:00
Chris Jones: And I think what I was trying to just simply say is we see the social construct sometimes as humanity, and it's not.
32:07
Chris Jones: It's it's just the marketplace.
32:09
Chris Jones: That what should take priority over that is how we interact with people when they have need.
32:16
Chris Jones: And I think that's what Jesus was trying to say, because he is talking to a lawyer.
32:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
32:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
32:22
SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
32:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
32:25
SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, I mean, so I think there's certain So I had this professor who was a kind of a a weird kind of Barclayan idealist.
32:35
SPEAKER_01: And he he would say, well, we just are the personas that we we play.
32:40
SPEAKER_01: So we have these different personas in life, and we take on these different masks, and and we're kind of the just the conglomeration of those different personas that we take on.
32:51
SPEAKER_01: And that's what we are.
32:52
SPEAKER_01: We are what we become.
32:54
SPEAKER_01: And so we're kind of this bundle of different personas that some of which dominate in our lives over time.
33:01
SPEAKER_01: And so he he kind of took that view.
33:04
Chris Jones: And I would agree with that, but I would also agree that if you allow that to happen, you can end up in a very miserable state.
33:10
SPEAKER_01: Aaron Ross Powell Sure.
33:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
33:12
SPEAKER_01: So does that raise a question about yeah, I guess is there some sort of core self that is kind of that is pure and unsoiled?
33:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
33:22
Chris Jones: And so the more personas happen in the external, that would speak to our physical man.
33:28
Chris Jones: And but yet still internally, we are still self.
33:32
Chris Jones: We are just learning how to interact with the social construct, with the external.
33:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
33:38
SPEAKER_01: So there's a presumption, at least, that there is some kind of unified self, even as we are in the marketplace of different personas, that we can take on different personas or personality traits.
33:51
SPEAKER_01: And that per those personas or personality traits in the in the marketplace can actually fragment us.
33:58
SPEAKER_01: And and they become something that ultimately we, or at least at our core, maybe we're not, or it it it's could leave us confused about who we truly are.
34:11
Chris Jones: Yeah.
34:11
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
34:12
Chris Jones: And I think that's what Jesus' message was there was you know, though you are in the world, don't be of it.
34:18
Chris Jones: I think another way to say that is though you are in the social construct, don't be defined by the laws.
34:23
Chris Jones: Don't stop at not hurting other people that to do good is to go take care of other people of your own expense.
34:31
Chris Jones: That's his idea of love, of how he explained it anyway.
34:34
Chris Jones: That's how he defined it.
34:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
34:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
34:38
SPEAKER_01: I have several thoughts.
34:41
SPEAKER_01: I think Yeah, I mean you could think of this as kind of less like the Barclayan kind of bundle of properties idea.
34:50
SPEAKER_01: Not every Barclayan affirms that.
34:51
SPEAKER_01: I d I don't want to leave that impression, but that was kind of my professor's kind of view.
34:57
SPEAKER_01: You could take the kind of Aristotelian view or something like this, and maybe this doesn't map onto what Jesus is doing.
35:03
SPEAKER_01: I I'm just teasing out some different ways you could you could think about this.
35:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
35:08
SPEAKER_01: You might think, along with the Aristotelian idea, that there is some kind of substantial whole, some sort of substantial form that is in a material relationship that itself is can either be fragmented or can be can be an integrated, unified self.
35:30
SPEAKER_01: And and by way of, at least in the context of kind of the the gospels and the redemptive situation where we are not interacting with our environment in the way that is full or complete or holistic, we are, as it were, effectively fragmenting ourselves, fragmenting our consciousness and becoming less self rather than more self or fuller selves.
35:58
SPEAKER_01: So you might think of the self as a kind of in a virtue construct that way, along the Aristotelian line or something, that uh maybe there is this higher ideal that ourselves are truly called to in the Gospels.
36:10
SPEAKER_01: And by not giving ourselves, as it were, to the one in need, we are becoming less selves or something like that.
36:18
SPEAKER_01: We are becoming Interesting.
36:20
SPEAKER_01: In that virtue context, we are becoming vicious in our character, which is effectively bringing about some kind of fragmentation of the soul.
36:29
SPEAKER_01: Maybe you think about it that way.
36:31
SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's one way to think about it.
36:32
Chris Jones: Almost death of ourself.
36:34
Chris Jones: Yeah.
36:34
Chris Jones: Because we become selfish to ourself, that's when we actually find death.
36:38
Chris Jones: It's counterintuitive.
36:40
Chris Jones: So I like that.
36:43
Chris Jones: Interesting.
36:45
Chris Jones: Yeah.
36:45
Chris Jones: All right.
36:45
Chris Jones: So let's do a hard pivot because I want to get into the views that you hold, which is a Cartesian dualism position.
36:53
Chris Jones: I think it's called like the ghost in the machine, correct?
36:56
Chris Jones: That there is our soul and the machine is the physical body.
37:00
Chris Jones: And before we jump into that, because I have to ask, because typically, I think traditionally, it's believed that what connects these two is the pineal gland.
37:12
Chris Jones: So my question for you is do you hold that?
37:15
Chris Jones: Because I know you also hold yourself to be a neocartesian substance dualism.
37:20
Chris Jones: So I'm just going to hand every bit of that to you and let you unpack that and make it digestible.
37:26
Chris Jones: Yeah, yeah.
37:27
SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
37:28
SPEAKER_01: So the Cartesian or the Neo-Cartesian view is pretty close to, if not effectively, the same as the kind of crude platonic view or picture that we talked about earlier, insofar as my personhood is identical to my soul or the immaterial thing that that I am.
37:53
SPEAKER_01: The immaterial thing is what makes me me.
37:56
SPEAKER_01: In other words, there is nothing about my body or brain that even comes close to making sense of who I am or making sense of what I am.
38:12
SPEAKER_01: So we could go through and, you know, reflect on different parts of the body and say, well, is that me?
38:18
SPEAKER_01: And there's no garden variety object that would seem to come close.
38:23
SPEAKER_01: The brain would be the closest, maybe.
38:25
SPEAKER_01: You you might say, I mean uh intuitively, some would say it comes close because it's kind of the operation central, kind of control center.
38:35
SPEAKER_01: Or at least many neuroscientists think of it as that, as such.
38:39
SPEAKER_01: So many of the operations, the more complex operations in our biology is controlled in some way by the brain or something like that.
38:48
SPEAKER_01: But uh so you might think that gets the closest.
38:51
SPEAKER_01: But Cartesians would say, well, it doesn't seem that actually any of that, even the brain, gets close to personal identity.
39:00
SPEAKER_01: The real sort of kind of impulse or motivation for the Cartesian is that the self is something that arguably we I have access to, and you have access to if your mind is like my mind, that I have immediate access to via the consciousness, and it's via that consciousness I have some kind of rigid designation or uh something that informs what I am, informs what or who I am in virtue of the fact that I have access to it, and I can when I refer to it, I refer appropriately, I refer rightly to it.
39:47
SPEAKER_01: So I'm using the concept of the I in a self referential way, in a real way.
39:54
SPEAKER_01: I'm referring to the self.
39:56
SPEAKER_01: And if that if that's the case, well, it seems the Cartesian.
40:00
SPEAKER_01: The strength of the Cartesian view is that the self, the I, is something that only I have access to, and it must be something other than the body and the brain, because there is no other there's no other designation within the garden variety material objects that actually make sense of me or even close to make sense of me.
40:21
SPEAKER_01: So something like that is the Cartesian view or the neocartesian view, that there are these mental properties or mental events and these physical events, and the mental properties or mental events are what gets closest to what makes me me.
40:37
SPEAKER_01: If I have mental events, the question is, or the assumption is those mental events are mental themselves.
40:46
SPEAKER_01: They are a thing themselves.
40:48
SPEAKER_01: They are substantial, as it were.
40:52
SPEAKER_01: So most neocartesians today would generally agree with Rene Descartes.
40:59
SPEAKER_01: Now they wouldn't agree with all the particulars of what he says or the idea, necessarily the idea that that consciousness is somehow physically located in the pineal gland.
41:11
SPEAKER_01: Whatever that means, they wouldn't necessarily affirm that.
41:16
SPEAKER_01: So a neocartesian like myself would not affirm that.
41:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, this is highly at one level, when you start thinking about consciousness, it becomes very intuitive, and I think it's I think it's probably true, or at least close to true, if there is a true view.
41:31
SPEAKER_01: At another level, it it does seem intuitive to or unintuitive to many people.
41:37
SPEAKER_01: It's highly controversial as a view.
41:40
SPEAKER_01: Most people, upon reflection, when you say that I am my soul, and I'm not strictly speaking a body or my body or brain, a lot of people find that really unintuitive.
41:51
SPEAKER_01: It's it's really quite at one level, it's quite an unpopular view, certainly unpopular within academic circles.
42:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
42:00
SPEAKER_01: Why why is that?
42:02
SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah.
42:03
SPEAKER_01: I think it's unpopular because we're so enmeshed in our bodies.
42:11
SPEAKER_01: We live and breathe and and enjoy and experience in and through our bodies.
42:17
SPEAKER_01: So our bodies, our bodily experiences are so intimate.
42:22
SPEAKER_01: They're so intimately related to me and my consciousness.
42:25
SPEAKER_01: So it's hard.
42:26
SPEAKER_01: I think it's difficult certainly to extricate that or to to make those kinds of distinctions.
42:34
SPEAKER_01: You know, there's there's lots of ideas that we could throw out there, like, okay, if you your spouse, you you kiss your spouse, there's this unintuitive idea, well, it's not really you kissing your spouse, it's your body kissing the spouse's body or something like that.
42:50
SPEAKER_01: It's not a real thing.
42:52
SPEAKER_01: So you might say, well, if that's the case, well, that seems pretty unintuitive.
42:57
SPEAKER_01: I think people are untutored to be what you might call dualists.
43:03
Chris Jones: They are people are So let's open that up because I think dichotomy.
43:09
Chris Jones: That is probably where you and the church, I I should say the church global start to have a differing opinion because we have always believed that we are three-part being.
43:19
Chris Jones: That is mind, or I'm sorry, your spirit, your your soul and your body, or mind, body, and soul, however you want to say it, but it's in three parts.
43:28
Chris Jones: And in a Cartesian view, or neocartesian substance dualism kind of view, substance dualist, you believe that we are in two parts, which is our soul and our physical body.
43:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
43:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
43:43
SPEAKER_01: The trich yeah, so you're talking about the trichotomist versus dichotomist view.
43:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that's interesting.
43:49
SPEAKER_01: I'm certainly open to the trichotomist view.
43:51
SPEAKER_01: I'm not closed off to it.
43:53
SPEAKER_01: I just have uh I'm not sure if I understand it.
43:56
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I've read, you know, various systematic theologies that talk about the trichotomous view, and there's certain biblical material we can point to that seem to suggest that there's a distinction between something like a spirit and a mind or or something of the sort.
44:11
SPEAKER_01: And I've you know, I g I was raised in charismatic circles, and so uh a lot of charismatic theologians tend to be trichotomous today.
44:22
SPEAKER_01: So I would yeah, I'm not I'm not opposed to it.
44:25
SPEAKER_01: I'm not closed off to it.
44:26
SPEAKER_01: I I'm just not sure I understand it.
44:29
SPEAKER_01: I think I think the card of the sort of Cartesian dualist view might be compatible with it, but I I and I haven't seen too much written on the trichotomist view in in recent kind of contemporary academic theology.
44:49
SPEAKER_01: I would like to see more.
44:51
SPEAKER_01: There was a New Testament scholar who wrote a a defense of the trichotomous view.
44:56
SPEAKER_01: Not it wasn't really a defense, it was kind of a exp exploration and retrieval of how to read Paul as a trichotomist.
45:04
SPEAKER_01: I read that text years and years ago, but I just haven't seen much on the position It's hard enough in this day and age to grasp kind of what a soul is or an immaterial, then further to grasp what the spirit is.
45:22
Chris Jones: And now in your idea of a soul is, would you say, is it eternal, is it everlasting, or is it temporal?
45:28
Chris Jones: What is what is your opinion of it?
45:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the time question is is really elusive to me.
45:35
SPEAKER_01: I think Yeah, I have two minds about this.
45:40
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I think a sort of presentism that we exist temporally seems to be the common sense view.
45:48
SPEAKER_01: It seems to be, yeah, we just exist in and through time.
45:50
SPEAKER_01: I can't make sense of my own experiences without some sort of temporal index, some sort of time or tense nature to the experience.
46:02
SPEAKER_01: The experience itself seems to go through movements and not just spatial movements, but temporal movements.
46:10
SPEAKER_01: So I can't seem to make sense of experiences without temporal.
46:14
SPEAKER_01: But on the other hand, when I think about like consciousness and I think about consciousness space, within consciousness space, I think the existentialists really do well with this.
46:26
SPEAKER_01: My one of my influencers, who's influenced my thought a lot, is Stephen Priest, who reads a lot of existentialists.
46:32
SPEAKER_01: But he he says when we think about or when we we when we dwell upon our own consciousness, there's something necessary in term necessarily present in our consciousness that is present to being itself.
46:49
SPEAKER_01: And being, whatever that is, ultimate being, seems to be present uh or pre a presence within our own consciousness.
46:59
SPEAKER_01: When you start going down that line of thought, it doesn't seem that being itself is intense or temporal.
47:10
SPEAKER_01: It seems to be something other, but it's kind of hard to grasp, or uh it's it is kind of elusive.
47:16
SPEAKER_01: As soon as I start thinking about my own consciousness space, I'm thinking about or I'm experiencing some kind of presence, and presence itself entails some sort of being.
47:31
SPEAKER_01: So is that I don't know.
47:33
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
47:34
Chris Jones: That's an honest answer.
47:37
Chris Jones: I love it.
47:38
Chris Jones: I love it.
47:39
Chris Jones: So let me let me throw this at you.
47:41
Chris Jones: I because I'm oh I this is a two-part thing.
47:45
Chris Jones: I'm gonna I'm gonna get your insight on it.
47:48
Chris Jones: In the very same place I was talking about with Jesus and the lawyer, where he talks about the Good Samaritan.
47:55
Chris Jones: One of the things that started me down this kind of different way of thinking is something that the lawyer asked him, and Jesus doesn't correct him.
48:02
Chris Jones: And he asked, Jesus, how do I inherit eternal life?
48:08
Chris Jones: And I was like, man, that's a loaded question.
48:10
Chris Jones: That is so big.
48:12
Chris Jones: And, you know, because what he is saying is, how do I inherit a life that has no beginning, no ending, that's always been, that will always be, that predates time.
48:20
Chris Jones: So he's talking about exactly why uh most people of faith believe Jesus came, and that's to bring us this Zoe, this life.
48:29
Chris Jones: That's by it, it sounds like not by the natural order of things, our life, because it's he asks, how do I inherit it?
48:37
Chris Jones: So it's like it's God's life he's bringing, you know, from the exterior of the universe, from the eternal state bringing it to us through Jesus.
48:46
Chris Jones: Yeah.
48:46
Chris Jones: That kind of throws a whole different idea on traditionally what we would perceive as life.
48:53
Chris Jones: So what's your ideas and your thoughts when I put it that way?
48:56
Chris Jones: Would you agree with that or would you disagree with that?
48:58
Chris Jones: What's your thoughts?
48:59
SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
49:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
49:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
49:02
SPEAKER_01: Zoe, I think, has a fuller connotation to it than than mere kind of mental life or bodily life.
49:13
SPEAKER_01: I think Zoe tends to in the New Testament, tends to yeah, it tends to be a fuller kind of life that is that's being referenced, a kind of complete.
49:25
Chris Jones: Out of what we have access to that would take some like Jesus coming from the eternal to bring it to us.
49:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's right.
49:35
SPEAKER_01: Like Paul talks about in Ephesians, where the fullness of deity is given to us in in in in Christ Himself, which is certainly external to us.
49:46
SPEAKER_01: It's outside of ourselves.
49:47
SPEAKER_01: We don't have it within ourselves.
49:50
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we might have some kind of immortality, but but that's not I don't think that's the same thing or identical to life.
50:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is something different.
50:03
SPEAKER_01: I think it's something different, certainly.
50:06
SPEAKER_01: So the reformers, the way they would interpret Adam and Eve is that Adam and Eve had some kind of conditional, some sort of immortality that that they just would live on in sort of in some kind of unending existence.
50:20
SPEAKER_01: But I think when Jesus talks about life and life eternal, that is given, given, given, it is something that is not achievable by the self or by the soul.
50:33
SPEAKER_01: It's something other than, something that's external to us.
50:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, certainly.
50:38
SPEAKER_01: I think the Zoe is different from that.
50:40
SPEAKER_01: I mean, when you bring Zoe in conversation with like Hebrew Huruach and uh Nefesh in the Old Testament, I think, yeah, whilst there might be overlapping meanings there, there there does seem to be a distinction between the kind of life, Zoe, that is given that is, you might even maybe think of these as types.
51:03
SPEAKER_01: I mean, in Genesis chapter 2, verses 7, where Jesus gives or God Himself gives breath and makes the living being alive.
51:13
SPEAKER_01: And we have this kind of image in the dry valley where where God brings to life the bones.
51:22
SPEAKER_01: It seems to be almost, I think it's a kind of creation picture where he's creating something and giving life to it.
51:32
SPEAKER_01: But not a Zoe life, because the life is the way we would understand it.
51:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay.
51:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's different.
51:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
51:38
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's it might be kind of a type of that, a type of something to come that is fuller kind of life, and it's all given to us by God.
51:47
SPEAKER_01: But in Genesis 2.7, it certain certainly seems to be the breath seems to be a kind of animating life that is creational life.
51:55
SPEAKER_01: Whereas Zoe is a kind of, if you think of it in this kind of this reform distinction of creation and redeemed order.
52:05
SPEAKER_01: The redeemed order is a different kind of life, a fully resurrected life that's given to us externally.
52:12
SPEAKER_01: And created life or animating life, which makes us alive in a different sense, is something that too is given to us, but is intrinsic to our very nature.
52:24
SPEAKER_01: It's something that, you know, I think older interpreters would interpret, like in Ecclesiastes 12.7, which picks up on, I think, Genesis 2.7.
52:33
SPEAKER_01: It's this idea that the life, referring to the soul.
52:38
SPEAKER_01: Now, there are lots of Old Testament interpreters who would disagree with this way of reading.
52:41
SPEAKER_01: And I, you know, we could have that discussion.
52:44
SPEAKER_01: I I think this is many theological interpreters throughout church history would read it this way in Ecclesiastes 12.7.
52:51
SPEAKER_01: When the body goes to the grave, it's the life that goes back to God.
52:54
SPEAKER_01: And I think what's being referred there, referred to, is the soul itself is going back to God in some form or fashion as the body dies.
53:04
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, but that is different than Zoe.
53:07
SPEAKER_01: Zoe is a kind of eternal life that is that is more than unending existence.
53:13
SPEAKER_01: It's the fullness of existence.
53:15
SPEAKER_01: It's deity given.
53:16
Chris Jones: It's almost assimilation with God Himself and His life and outside the It's a whole different thing.
53:22
Chris Jones: So I was wanting to get you input on it.
53:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
53:25
SPEAKER_01: It's deification, right?
53:26
SPEAKER_01: What the Eastern Orthodox call deification.
53:29
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of it's a mystery.
53:31
SPEAKER_01: It's a it's it's it's a mystery that's uh that that that's important in scripture in terms of i i it's i it's an informing category that is actually mysterious in itself.
53:46
unknown: Yeah.
53:46
SPEAKER_02: It's mystery.
53:48
SPEAKER_01: It's divine life given to human life.
53:51
SPEAKER_01: Whilst retaining the distinction between creator and creature, the creator gives life, his own life to creatures.
54:02
Chris Jones: Yeah.
54:02
Chris Jones: Well, let me throw the second part of this at you.
54:05
Chris Jones: It says that we are a living tabernacle.
54:07
Chris Jones: And when I think of the tabernacle, or you know, the later the temple and the second temple, I think of the construction of it.
54:14
Chris Jones: It was in three parts.
54:16
Chris Jones: Now, the outer courtyard would represent our flesh, the holy place would represent our soul, what we've been talking about.
54:24
Chris Jones: And the third place, as a, I guess, a trichotomist, that that would represent spiritually.
54:31
Chris Jones: But when I think about it, the first temple fulfilled its purpose because it had the Ark of the Covenant in that Holy of Holies.
54:40
Chris Jones: In other words, God was in that temple.
54:43
Chris Jones: The Spirit of God was in that Holy of Holies.
54:46
Chris Jones: But the second temple came about after the Babylonians destroyed the first temple, and that's when they lost the Ark of the Covenant.
54:52
Chris Jones: So when Jesus shows up, the temple he deals with doesn't have that in the Holy of Holies.
54:59
Chris Jones: Essentially, it's dead.
55:01
Chris Jones: The only thing it has is what we would say, well, kind of in reference to what we're talking about, it's flesh and it's soul.
55:08
Chris Jones: It's a duality, it's in two pieces.
55:11
Chris Jones: Without the Spirit of God making it a trichotomous, that's the right way to say it, in three parts.
55:18
Chris Jones: There's no life.
55:19
Chris Jones: There's only life to itself, because that's what that temple was doing.
55:23
Chris Jones: It was serving itself to the point Jesus is flipping tables.
55:27
Chris Jones: So when I start thinking about that in those terms, I start thinking archetypally like the number three, which is the number of completion or synthesis.
55:36
Chris Jones: It's the beginning, the story, and the end.
55:38
Chris Jones: And I always think of it in terms of music.
55:42
Chris Jones: In music, you can have two notes.
55:45
Chris Jones: They can be in tune with one another.
55:46
Chris Jones: They can tune to themselves, but they're isolated.
55:50
Chris Jones: They typically will just serve themselves.
55:52
Chris Jones: But when you add the third note, it's a complete chord.
55:56
Chris Jones: It's major or it's minor.
55:58
Chris Jones: And not only does it have a higher purpose, but now it the you know, Ionian theory or major theory says that all scales, all music, they all are the same universe.
56:08
Chris Jones: It's all the same scale.
56:09
Chris Jones: It's just different variations.
56:11
Chris Jones: You belong to something bigger.
56:13
Chris Jones: So when I think of it in those terms, it's almost like you could have a dichotomy and a trichotomy both exist simultaneously, that without God, without that Zoe that we were just talking about, that eternal life, you can tune to yourself, but you'll probably just be like that second temple where you just serve yourself.
56:32
Chris Jones: But if you have that third to tune to, where you are of something bigger, something bigger than you, that's universal energy and part of God, then you'll end up probably serving humanity and serving the greater good like Jesus did.
56:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
56:47
SPEAKER_01: I think creationally, I think what we can be more sure of is that there I certainly if we step back and think philosophically.
56:58
SPEAKER_01: Philosophically, I think we can step back and say that there are two parts, insofar as there are two types of events that we've talked about, the mental events and the physical events.
57:07
SPEAKER_01: And I think if we look back at certain creational texts in in the Old Testament, we could say something along those lines as well, that there are these two parts.
57:21
SPEAKER_01: Now that gets confirmed, I think, when we think about the afterlife.
57:25
SPEAKER_01: If we're thinking, if we're thinking kind of individualistically, or we're thinking about the individual and the composition of individual humans or persons themselves, if we have this is kind of the argument that John Cooper makes in his book, Body is Soul and Life Everlasting.
57:44
SPEAKER_01: He makes this argument that, well, we seem to have a lot of material in the Old Testament that seemed to suggest that we are two parts.
57:51
SPEAKER_01: We are body and we are mind or body and soul or something like that.
57:55
SPEAKER_01: And whatever the arrangement of those two things are, we have these kind of two irreducible parts.
58:03
SPEAKER_01: The soul cannot be reduced to the body, and the body itself seems to be distinct from the soul and is probably not reducible to the soul itself, but it because it seems to have, at least commonsensically, an existence all on its own.
58:19
SPEAKER_01: So that's why when you have when you die commonsensically, the body is still your body, but you're just not there animating the body.
58:32
SPEAKER_01: You're not living in and through the body or experiencing the body.
58:35
SPEAKER_01: And so there's this practice we have in Christianity of burial, and there are places actually where physical bodies go.
58:43
SPEAKER_01: And but there also seems to be this other teaching that there are spirits or soul-like things that exist distinct from the body.
58:53
SPEAKER_01: That gets picked up in the New Testament when we think about the disembodied intermediate state.
58:57
SPEAKER_01: That's John Cooper's argument, that if there is a disembodied intermediate state, that is the kind of the prominent teaching within Scripture, then it seems to entail something, or at least the best, the inference to the best explanation is something like a soul that is distinct from the body, and that soul can exist on and live on beyond or without the body.
59:19
SPEAKER_01: It can exist in this, again, this disembodied state where the body is somewhere and the soul is existing in a different way, at least.
59:30
SPEAKER_01: So at least that seems to be a clear.
59:34
SPEAKER_01: As far as this third part and the temple, that's an interesting yeah, that's an interesting line of thought.
59:40
SPEAKER_01: And I think I think there have been church fathers maybe who have thought along those lines.
59:48
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
59:48
SPEAKER_01: I so I wonder about that.
59:50
SPEAKER_01: I wonder if the third part, the Zoe that's given, the resurrected life, is the reconstituted temple.
1:00:02
SPEAKER_01: And that is this new life that is given in and through the corporate entity itself.
1:00:10
Chris Jones: That we are the living stones.
1:00:11
Chris Jones: Yeah.
1:00:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:00:13
SPEAKER_01: Or something something like that.
1:00:14
SPEAKER_01: So we're we're the church.
1:00:16
SPEAKER_01: The church is the new living temple.
1:00:18
SPEAKER_01: It's the reconstituted temple.
1:00:20
SPEAKER_01: It is the body of Christ that that that is given the life.
1:00:24
SPEAKER_01: And that's a collective unity or collectively.
1:00:27
Chris Jones: That's a good insight.
1:00:29
Chris Jones: It brings us together in unity.
1:00:31
Chris Jones: It gives us something bigger than ourselves, which is the body of Christ for the here and now.
1:00:36
Chris Jones: That's some very good insight.
1:00:38
Chris Jones: I like that.
1:00:38
Chris Jones: I never thought about it in that way.
1:00:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
1:00:42
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, maybe it's all wrong, but I liked it.
1:00:46
Chris Jones: I liked it.
1:00:49
Chris Jones: Well, listen, this has been really fantastically interesting.
1:00:54
Chris Jones: I have loved it.
1:00:55
Chris Jones: And I thank you for your time.
1:00:57
Chris Jones: You've been very generous with it.
1:00:59
Chris Jones: And I want to give you the opportunity to tell us what you're working on, where we can go get your books and how we can contact you.
1:01:05
Chris Jones: If you would take some time to tell us about what you got going on.
1:01:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I appreciate that.
1:01:10
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Chris.
1:01:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I've been working on a nonprofit for the last couple of years called Soul Science Ministries, and you can see it on SoulScience Ministries.com, SoulScience Ministries.com.
1:01:22
SPEAKER_01: So I'll say that three times, right?
1:01:24
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
1:01:24
SPEAKER_01: And then people will remember it.
1:01:26
SPEAKER_01: And uh so that's where it's a you might think of it as an educational resource and apologetics, broadly speaking, apologetics.
1:01:34
SPEAKER_01: People have different views on what apologetics is, but looking at the question of what it means to be human in light of the next age, the the new age and the in and tech, the the goal is to navigate that that world.
1:01:48
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, so we have a lot in in the works at Soul Science, a lot that we're working on this coming year, and hopefully a big conference in in November, but we're still solidifying that, so I can't officially announce it yet, but it's gonna be fun.
1:02:06
SPEAKER_01: Big names are gonna be here.
1:02:09
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna have a big discussion about what it means to be human, mind, brain, and machine.
1:02:16
SPEAKER_01: I love it.
1:02:17
SPEAKER_01: So you can find some of my works there, more academic works.
1:02:21
SPEAKER_01: My my more mainstream popular work is coming out this summer called Why Souls.
1:02:28
SPEAKER_01: Why Souls.
1:02:30
SPEAKER_01: So it's I think it's it's my most accessible, readable book, Defending the Soul and its implications for the universe.
1:02:39
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Why Souls.
1:02:41
SPEAKER_01: Why Souls?
1:02:42
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, yeah, plus to get this.
1:02:46
SPEAKER_01: It'll be out everywhere on every major platform, obviously Amazon, but it's uh it's published by If Publishers or Collective Inc.
1:02:55
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:02:55
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, it'll be out in June, and you can buy it on any of the major platforms.
1:03:00
SPEAKER_01: Barnes Noble, Amazon.com, any of the major platforms.
1:03:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:03:05
SPEAKER_01: So do check that out.
1:03:07
Chris Jones: Yeah.
1:03:07
Chris Jones: And if somebody wants to get in contact with you, do you have a way for people to reach out?
1:03:12
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
1:03:13
SPEAKER_01: So you can contact me through SoulScience Ministries.com through the website.
1:03:18
SPEAKER_01: I also offer consultation on publishing through becoming a faith-based author.com.
1:03:25
SPEAKER_01: You can contact me there if you're interested in anything related to publishing and writing and the like.
1:03:32
SPEAKER_01: I offer a lot of consultation on that.
1:03:34
SPEAKER_01: I do have my personal email address.
1:03:37
SPEAKER_01: It's on the web, you can find it.
1:03:39
SPEAKER_01: You can find it.
1:03:40
SPEAKER_01: But if you go to either one of those sites, you can email me there directly.
1:03:45
SPEAKER_01: Obviously, I'm on social media, so you can find me there.
1:03:49
SPEAKER_01: You can find me on Facebook as well through Soul Science.
1:03:52
SPEAKER_01: You can contact me that way.
1:03:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so lots of different ways you can contact me.
1:03:57
SPEAKER_01: And my email is on there.
1:03:59
SPEAKER_01: You can find my academic work on academia.edu if you're more interested in more the academic side of things.
1:04:05
SPEAKER_01: So I do have an academia page, so you can find me there as well.
1:04:09
Chris Jones: Yeah.
1:04:10
unknown: Yeah.
1:04:11
Chris Jones: Well, thank you again.
1:04:12
Chris Jones: I appreciate this.
1:04:13
Chris Jones: It has been awesome.
1:04:13
Chris Jones: I've really enjoyed it, and it's very been very enlightening.
1:04:16
Chris Jones: Thank you for opening up some of these ideas and explaining them.
1:04:19
Chris Jones: So I hope to get you back on here when you get the new book out.
1:04:23
Chris Jones: So that'd be great.
1:04:24
Chris Jones: Thank you.
1:04:24
Chris Jones: I appreciate it.
1:04:25
Chris Jones: And we'll talk again soon.
1:04:27
Chris Jones: Thank you, Chris.
1:04:30
Chris Jones: Thanks for joining me here on Spiritual Hot Sauce.
1:04:33
Chris Jones: I'd love to hear from you.
1:04:34
Chris Jones: So please reach out with questions, comments, andor concerns.
1:04:38
Chris Jones: And don't forget to like, subscribe, and review us.
1:04:42
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1:04:45
Chris Jones: And if you enjoy the flavor of the sauce, then please share it with others.
1:04:50
Chris Jones: I would appreciate that.
1:04:51
Chris Jones: We'll see you next time.