John W. Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the Monism-Dualism Debate

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1989, 262 pgs.

Summary: A carefully written and researched defense of the traditional view of the soul over and against anthropological monism. Monism refers to the body and the soul being the same thing and dualism refers to the soul continuing to exist independently of an earthly body.

Under a variety of pressures, Christian scholars have been moving away from understanding the Bible to teach dualism in anthropology.  In some circles dualism has become the supposed cause of almost all ills. The more academically palatable view is now monism.

Among Christians who have a high view of Scripture, the pressure comes from a concern to decouple biblical theology from Platonic or philosophical influences, an unfortunate confusion about proper inference and speculation in developing theological outcomes from the Bible, and confusing the historical literalism of Augustine and the Reformation with Spinoza’s literalism.
Among liberals the theological pressure includes a similar mix but also a bias towards materialism and against the supernatural. The materialistic bias is so ambient as to influence all parties.

Dr. Cooper shows that accepting monism requires jettisoning some biblical texts, heavy-handed interpretation of other texts, creating unique ad hoc explanations of the intermediate state (including immediate recreation at death), requiring Paul to change his views on the soul midstream, or embracing doctrines openly rejected by the historical church and the Bible for instance soul sleep. The rational deficiencies of monism in coordination with a resurrection are no less troubling.

Dr. Cooper argues that both the Old and New Testament require dualism and that while Greek dualism is similar to the Bible’s doctrine it is not identical. He notes that historically theologians like Augustine and Calvin were incautious in describing the soul along Platonic lines and that as Cartesian and Kantian dualism captured the academic imagination theologians tended to minimize the Bible’s more holistic dualism. Yet none of these historical mistakes warrant rejecting dualism.

Exemplar quote:

Let me outline my version of dualism. . .If to be absent from the body for me is to be with the Lord—still “in Christ” and “living together with him” as I am already now, then I must exist between my death and the resurrection. And I must be able to enjoy fellowship with Christ in some way. . .That is all we know from the New Testament. It does not say more. It does not elaborate. It does not describe in detail. For anyone to say more than this is indeed to speculate.

But certain things necessarily follow from this modest biblical teaching. If this doctrine is true, then other things must also be true, for they are contained in or entailed by its truth. Simply put, the doctrine cannot possibly be true if these other things are not true. For example, if I am with Christ, then I—my essential selfhood or core person—must survive physical death. The being or entity who I am must continue to exist. In striking ways that being might be different from the being who now lives embodied on earth. . .But the being or thing that I am must continue to exist. Otherwise it would not be I but someone or something else that is with Christ (176-177).

Benefits/Detriments: An extremely helpful resource in considering the body/soul distinction biblically, historically, and philosophically. Suggested for pastors and college students.