Preface

Summary

It is a strange fact about our culture that we are operating with a variety of radically different views of the basic nature of human beings. Even stranger is the fact that so few people seem to notice the first fact. Are humans immortal souls temporarily housed in physical bodies, or are we our bodies? The purpose of this book is to pursue this question from the perspectives of three disciplines: Christian theology, science (especially the cognitive neurosciences), and philosophy.

My central thesis is, first, that we are our bodies – there is no additional metaphysical element such as a mind or soul or spirit. But, second, this “physicalist” position need not deny that we are intelligent, moral, and spiritual. We are, at our best, complex physical organisms, imbued with the legacy of thousands of years of culture, and, most importantly, blown by the Breath of God's Spirit; we are Spirited bodies.

This book has grown almost organically, rather than in the linear manner of most books. It began as a single lecture, variations of which I have been privileged to present at numerous institutions as distant as New Zealand and South Africa. It divided in half and each half grew when I was invited to give the Harold Stoner Clark Lectures at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks, California.