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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 October 2013
Much theology presupposes a metaphysical spirit or soul, the existence of which has been questioned in contemporary neurobiological research. Green, Murphy and others argue for alternatives to metaphysical description. If the neuroscience is correct and the soul, if it exists, is not metaphysical then many theological descriptions will need serious revision or possibly even abandonment. One such theological description, directly affected and long considered to be an essential part of Christianity, is God's personal self-communication to humans. This has traditionally been understood to occur through the metaphysical human soul or spirit. The question explored in this article is whether the existence of a metaphysical soul is an all or nothing matter for Christian theology.
A rational and strong challenge to the existence of metaphysical soul is demonstrably not new. Nonetheless, from the beginnings of modernity it has been generally assumed, utilising Augustinian anthropology, that the soul was a metaphysical element of human anatomy. Huxley's work on sensation, including ‘Has the Frog a Soul’, determines the anatomical location of the soul by its supposed function. Huxley questions early modernity's assumptions regarding the nature of sensation and the presumed role of the metaphysical soul within the sensorium. Huxley deduces limits and conditions on the existence of the soul and arrives at a description which has similarities to Tertullian's corporeal description of the soul. Huxley, however, does not engage with Tertullian, whose relatively orthodox description of the soul answers a number of issues that Huxley raises. Tertullian's careful revision of the Aristotelian category of corporeality is not exactly the same as Huxley's nineteenth-century materialism or contemporary physicalism. Tertullian's description of the soul is remarkably similar to Augustine's, differing mainly on the issue of corporeality and metaphysicality. Tertullian's description ironically draws on and shares the same functions as Greek philosophy and medicine. This description of the soul seems to be based more on these sources than scripture, unusually for Tertullian. Some form of reappropriation of Tertullian's non-metaphysical soul may be useful in the contemporary debate, noting the limitations of his understandings of biology and physics. It seems possible to take note, in some form, of changed and better contemporary worldviews, in order to better describe theological anthropology and in particular that element related to the soul.
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4 Alexander, C., The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1956), p. 6Google Scholar.
5 T. H. Huxley, ‘On Sensation and the Unity of Structure of Sensiferous Organs’, pp. 292–3.
6 Fara, P., The Making of Genius (London: MacMillan, 2002), pp. 87–9Google Scholar.
7 T. H. Huxley, ‘On Sensation and the Unity of Structure of Sensiferous Organs’.
8 Huxley, T. H., ‘Bishop Berkeley on the Metaphysics of Sensation’, in Collected Essays, vol. 6 (Worcester, MA: Clark University, 1871)Google Scholar, Huxley, ‘Has a Frog a Soul?’
9 Huxley, ‘Bishop Berkeley on the Metaphysics of Sensation’, p. 247.
10 Ibid., pp. 247, 248.
11 Ibid., pp. 248–9.
12 Ibid., p. 247.
13 Tertullian, De anima, 7.
14 T. H. Huxley, ‘Bishop Berkeley on the Metaphysics of Sensation’, p. 251.
15 Huxley, ‘Has a Frog a Soul?’ Huxley's essay was written with the expressed purpose of presenting the results of anatomical research to a debate between two philosophical schools, materialism and idealism.
16 Ibid. Huxley's reference to philosophers here cites More, Newton and Clarke.
17 Ibid. The question of ethics and vivisection was itself a controversial topic contributed to by Darwin and Huxley.
18 Ibid.
19 Huxley, ‘On Sensation and the Unity of Structure of Sensiferous Organs’, pp. 300–1.
20 The Wordsworth Dictionary of Biography (Ware, Herts: Helicon, 1994).
21 Ibid.
22 Huxley, T. H., ‘On the Present State of Knowledge as the Structure and Functions of Nerve’, Scientific Memoirs (Worcester, MA: Clark University, 1854)Google Scholar. The Huxley File, C. Blinderman and D. Joyce, Clark University. http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley (accessed July 2013).
23 T. H. Huxley, ‘On Sensation and the Unity of Structure of Sensiferous Organs’, pp. 300–1.
24 Ibid., p. 313.
25 Ibid., pp. 318–19.
26 Tertullian, De anima, 6, 8, 25–6.
27 Tertullian, , De anima, ed. Waszink, J. H. (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1947), 35nGoogle Scholar. Waszink also identifies that Tertullian quotes extensively from other Latin authors, including Pliny, with particular reference to nature and science. De anima, 8.4, p. 1025, 24.5; Lucretius in De anima, 5.6. Waszink, p. 1305; Seneca twice in 20.1 and 42.2; Suetonius in 44 and Sallust in 20. Ibid., p. 46n. Tertullian also appears to follow Latin rhetorical convention in presenting his case. Waszink has identified the use of classical Latin metrical devices in De anima, at a time when these were beginning to be lost across the Mediterranean and in Rome. Ibid., pp. 212–45; Jerome admired and used Tertullian's phraseology from De anima. Kelly, J. N. D., Jerome (London: Duckworth, 1975), p. 108nGoogle Scholar. While Tertullian uses Platonic and Stoic terminology, he harbours extreme suspicion about the nature of the source of much of this philosophy. Tertullian here refers to Plato's Athenian academies, Stoic porches and Socrates’ prison. In contrast, Tertullian appears to exempt the Lyceum from generalised dismissal in De anima. Tertullian, De anima, 3. His suspicion is overt in the case of Socrates’ reference to his demon and he implies it in other schools for their acquiescence to pagan deities. De anima, 1. Nor is Tertullian optimistic about philosophy's ability to either find truth or sustain the spirit. ‘Such . . . is the enormous preoccupation of the philosophic mind that it is generally unable to see straight before it. Hence (the story of) Thales falling into the well. It very commonly, too, through not understanding even its own opinions, suspects a failure of its own health.’ De anima, 6.
28 Jeremiah 1:2.
29 Tertullian explains in De anima the examples of Adam, Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel. Tertullian, De anima, 11, 45.
30 Tertullian, De anima, 1.
31 Ibid., 17.
32 Temkin in Soranus, Gynaecology, ed. O. Temkin (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1956), pp. xxiv–xlix.
33 De anima, 9.4: ‘By Ecstatic vision’ is an interpretation. ‘By ekstasis in spirit’ would better translate the original per ecstasin in spiritu. Tertullian, De anima, ed. Waszink, 9.4.
34 Latin: Forte nescio quid de Anima disserueramus, cum ea soror in spiritu esset, De anima, ed. Waszink, 9.4.
35 De anima, 9.4.
36 Huxley, ‘Has a Frog a Soul?’
37 Tertullian, De anima, ed. Waszink, pp. 25–7; Tertullian refers to both Soranus’ belief that the soul forms with the infant and to Soranus’ reference to ‘slaying’ the unborn infant as a regrettable necessity in some cases of breach birth. Ibid., p. 25; Soranus, Gynaecology, 4.9.61–4.13.70.
38 Tertullian, De anima, pp. 5, 25, 27; Osborne, E., Tertullian, First Theologian of the West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 167CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Soranus, Gynaecology, 1.12.43.
39 Tertullian, De Anima, 26. Soranus, Gynaecology, 1.7.30 .
40 Somewhat equivalent to what would now be called ‘science’.
41 Tertullian, De anima, p. 51.
42 Augustine, De anima et eius origine, 2.9, 4.18–21; Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram, 7.21.27, 10.26.45.
43 Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram, 10.26.45.
44 Church Dogmatics (CD), III/1, pp. 341–2.
45 Ibid.
46 CD III/2, p. 7.
47 CD III/2, p. 9.