The Soul

Comments by Matt Anderson

(MereOrthodoxy blogsite)

I’m generally sympathetic to Robert Gundry’s helpful explication of the role of the body in Biblical theology. His careful exegetical work foreshadowed John Cooper’s conclusions in Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting: the anthropology of Scripture points toward something like a substance-dualism, even if it’s not the strong dualism of Plato.

But along the way, Gundry offers this odd argument in defense of dualism:

What in the constitution of man requires God to be there with man? But in that man exists as a unity of two substances, spirit and body, he requires the cohesive force of God for true and full being. Kasemann has seen that there is no way to bind a substantival body and a substantial soul together except by mythological speculation. For mythological speculation, we might prefer God. But the point is the same. A dichotomous distinction within man requires a cohesive force from the outside. And pace Kasemann, that is good, for it fuses anthropology and theology. Insofar as theology and anthropology dovetail in this manner, then, our view of man receives confirmation.

But within the framework of Christian theology, the continuing existence of any creature requires the subterranean affirmation by God of their being. The internal unity of the angelic form could be undone at any moment, as its being is as contingent as the being of humans. Positing God as the only explanation for a particular feature of human existence is no more interesting or illuminating than positing God as the only explanation for existence at all.

What’s more, Gundry’s position actually cuts against the efforts to identify ways in which the soul and body might interact, a problematic feature of all such “God of the gaps” arguments. On such an account, the difficulty of explanation of the relationship turns (magically!) from a virtue into a vice.

In his defense, Gundry is affirming Ernst Kasemann’s argument, and Kasemann is specifically concerned with undoing Rudolph Bultmann’s overly anthropological interpretation of Paul, a reading that problematically minimized God’s involvement with humans. But solving one error with another is never a good strategy, as Kasemann does here.

I think Gundry’s explication of the role and meaning of the body in Scripture is generally correct, but this argument is hardly his finest moment.

Response by Jim Roane

Matt, I appreciate your response to my comments. Yes, I must admit that at times I misread Robert Gundry, perhaps with a jaded view considering his hermeneutical methodology. He is certainly a very capable person—much more than I am, I am sure. The meaning of words comes from a complicated process, that’s for sure. I personally, however—using Ludwig Wittgenstein’s beetle in the box analogy— am not sure I see Gundry’s beetle as clearly as I would like. At times, I get the feeling that Gundry gets carried away with the description to the extent that what is being said becomes the essence of the object of consideration, rather than the other way around.

Once we remove the intuitive from our process of understanding, and revert to a descriptive process our journey becomes more difficult, that’s for sure. Intuition, to be expressed, however, must be described. And, therein, lies the problem. Perhaps, it is the circuitous route that Gundry takes that bores me. Sorry, but that is the best I can come up with at this moment.

Intuitively, I know that I think. To extrapolate beyond that, I rely on experience to process that intuition. To express my discoveries I rely on language, grounded in the intuitive knowledge of cause and effect. Paul, and other Biblical authors are no different. For me, Paul and the other Biblical authors, particularly those within the context of the New Testament, wrote from an intuitive impulse to express their experience within the context of a defined religious community, or at most to those aspiring to become part of that community or to those whom they wished to evangelize and disciple.

Now, it is at this point that Gundry loses me. Paul, for instance, gave definition to the Agnostos Theos at Athens to express an intuitive encounter based on the intuitive knowledge of experience, rather than letting the Athenians provide the meaning of God. Perhaps, I am selfish, or uncompromisingly ignorant, but for me, only God can give definition to God or the essence of His creation.

Again, I must say that the word contains the Word, the essence of all that is, and it is to that to whom we address our inquires, rather than partially define these essences through the process of a depraved language—heathen literature and so-forth. So, in my opinion, Gundry does a poor job in following God’s thoughts after Him.

Now, I realize that this leave a broad target to shoot at; however, I learned a long time ago that I learn very little unless I am willing to become vulnerable. And, admittedly, I may be reading too much into Gundry’s approach; however, I have a feeling that I will enjoy the fire of the responses, if there are any.