Adam at In the Agora has been wrestling with the mind-brain dilemma and its biomedical ramifications, specifically with regard to human cloning. He attempts to connect the presence of a person’s soul (I’ll clarify some terms in a minute) with particular brain functions. His first post is here; his second, here.

First, a little by way of introduction. According to the ITA site, Adam is a first-year grad student at UC-San Diego in cognitive neuroscience - which, if I had it to do over again, is exactly what I would study in addition to theology. I am glad he is asking hard questions and seeking to come up with viable and applicable answers.

As for terms, Adam uses “soul” to describe the immaterial dimension of an individual. This is unfortunate and confusing from a biblical perspective, since both the Old and New Testaments present a monistic view of anthropology: we do not have souls, we are souls. I have argued elsewhere (here and there) for a nonreductive physicalism - different from that advocated by Nancey Murphy and others - that does not divide or section a person into dichotomous or trichotomous existence. The spirit and soul are distinguishable functionally, but irreducible and indivisible in essence.

This distinction is partially a result of my Christology: the Second Member of the Godhead existed spiritually prior to the Incarnation; in the embodied state, His personality was no different than it had been previously. Personality, it would thus seem, is a function of the spirit and not the soul. The spirit is that which animates a soul (i.e., the body, including the brain) but cannot be separated from it in this lifetime. Hence, the monistic view of human nature.

For these and other reasons, therefore, wherever Adam has used the word “soul,” I will replace it with the more appropriate term “spirit.”

While it is possible that Adam holds to either pre-existence of what I would regard as the human spirit (as do Mormons) or reincarnation , he instead (if I understand him correctly) takes a creation approach to the soul. That is, God creates a soul for each individual either at conception, birth, or some point in between. (This is in contrast to the traducian understanding of the soul, which would see the soul as included in the process of people reproducing after their kind: the soul is inherent in reproduction. Both creationism and traducian views of the soul may be biblically supported, although I find the traducian perspective the stronger of the two.)

Adam writes,

. . . when does the [spirit] actually fuse with the brain? There is no obvious point in the development of the fetus when the brain makes a quantum leap from mere automaton to functioning human . . . I’m simply going to say that at some point, between when the fetus has no brain (up to about 21 days) and when the fetus is fully developed, the [spirit] somehow makes contact with the organism and it becomes a person. Up to that point, no matter how much our senses may be fooled into thinking that the fetus resembles a person, it is a soulless clump of matter. When, at the end of life, the cerebral cortex no longer functions, the soul has already left the body; again, though, it’s impossible to say when exactly that might happen.”

From this premise, Adam goes on to argue for the appropriateness of biomedical cloning. His conclusion notwithstanding, however, it is important to investigate his premise more closely and - most importantly - to examine his anthropology biblically.

Such scrutiny, I am convinced, reveals that his conceptualization of a person’s immaterial nature is biblically untenable.

The first difficulty has to do with the nature of personality. Christology requires that personality be embedded in the spirit, not the soul, since the personality of Jesus did not come into existence at birth or change after His death.

It may be argued that the Incarnation was supernatural - and so it was - but it is difficult to account for His (and our) continuing, enduring sense of personality in heaven and the eternal state if - as Adam argues - personality is part of the soul: Christ does not possess a soulish body now, but a spiritual body; we will not have soulish as now bodies in heaven, but instead will possess spiritual bodies (1 Cor 15:42-45).

If our personality or humanity is a function of our soul, then it is difficult to explain the continuance of our sense of self in the eternal state. Perhaps God keeps a spiritual DNA warehouse somewhere and re-creates personalities as people die, but it is far simpler and more biblical (I think) to see personality as a characteristic of the spirit.

Suggesting that a person’s spirit - or even soul - somehow departs from the individual prior to death is impossible: it is the spirit that gives life; if the spirit departs, the body dies. Even is one were to argue for a distinction between soul and spirit at an immaterial level, the spirit and the soul are indivisible.

Then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” - Gen 2.7

No spirit, no life; no spirit, no soul. Or, at least: no spirit, dead soul. Paul says, of the incestuous fellow in 1 Cor 5:1-5, that he had delivered him over to Satan for the destruction of his body in order that his spirit - not soul - would be saved. Adam’s position implies that the soul of an individual - the experiencing dimension and that which comprises personality - somehow leaves the body while the spirit remains to sustain life. This is without any Scriptural support whatsoever and flies in the face of biblical teaching elsewhere.

Adam also writes,

One comment rebuttal to this argument is the potentiality argument: that a blastocyst could, if implanted inside a mother, become a human being . . . I’m going to borrow from neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga [who said by way of analogy,] Home Depot has the materials for 30 houses. If it burned to the ground, would you lament that 30 houses burned down, or that Home Depot was incinerated . . .?”

If one is a naturalist, this is a defensible (albeit reprehensible) position: if the human blastocyst is, as Adam maintains, merely a “soulless clump of matter,” then it really is indistinguishable from a two-by-four or a bucket of paint. But if our humanness is embedded in our DNA, then we are quite different from dead pieces of lumber or any other inanimate object.

Further, if the traducian view is correct, then the incipient spirit/soul is already present in the human blastocyst; if the creationist view is correct, then God is prevented from creating that which He would under expected and natural circumstances.

Far more analogous would be the human blastocyst and the eggs of a bald eagle. If I were to crush under foot the eggs of an eagle, would it be fair to say that I had killed an eagle? Morally and legally, I would be culpable. The only difference is that the eggs of an eagle are regarded more highly and protected more aggressively than the human blastocyst or fetus.

Lastly, Adam seeks to base his argument in part on the connection between the brain and personality. He argues,

. . . I’m going to assume that the soul exists, some sort of extra-dimensional ghostly substance that contains your essence, and which will live on after your death. Nevertheless, even given the existence of this mysterious non-matter, we need to account for the fact that damage to the brain can cause the erasure of particular cognitive function . . .”

In my earlier posts, I made mention of Phineas Gage, the railroadman whose brain was pierced by an iron rod and his personality subsequently changed dramatically. One theorist asked if Gage had lost his soul But this change is not difficult to understand with a proper biblical anthropology.

Personality resides in the spirit; the spirit animates the person, i.e., it initiates, regulates, and supervises neural activity in the brain. If the brain is damaged, the spirit is no longer able to express itself as previously. The spirit has not been changed - that is, the true personality - but the brain does not allow an accurate manifestation.

By way of analogy, I drive my car down the highway at 70 mph without losing control. If the highway is damaged or destroyed, however, I can no longer drive the same route in the same manner. My driving is affected although nothing has basically changed with regard to my car. So, too, the spirit may be intact although the brain - through trauma or vascular degeneration or some other disease - is compromised.

Finally, Adam seems to want to allow for biomedical cloning without harming the reality or concept of the soul. He may do this in any number of ways, but he cannot claim biblical authority or support with that which he has brought forth to this point. As mentioned above, his argument may be adequate for a naturalist but it is not consistent or compatible with an orthodox, biblical anthropology.


2 Cor 1.13