Persons; Human and Divine
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PERSONS This page intentionally left blank Persons Human and Divine Edited by PETER VAN INWAGEN and DEAN ZIMMERMAN CLARENDON PRESS · OXFORD 1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York the several contributors 2007 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by Laserwords Private Limited, Chennai, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 978–0–19–927750–6 ISBN 978–0–19–927751–3 (Pbk.) 13579108642 For Philip L. Quinn In Memoriam Acknowledgements Almost all the essays in this book were presented at a workshop that took place February 8–9, 2004, in Princeton, New Jersey. The meeting was supported by the Pew Christian Scholars Program, which also sponsored two other, larger conferences on the nature of human persons—July 22–24, 2001 in Skaneateles, New York; and September 5–8, 2002, in Princeton, New Jersey. The editors thank the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Christian Scholars Program for their generous support. We thank the authors and the many other participants in these meetings for their diligence and geniality. And we are grateful to Jason Turner and Matthew Benton for their help in preparing the manuscript for publication. Contents List of Contributors ix Three Introductory Questions 1 Dean Zimmerman I. IDEALISM 1. Idealism Vindicated 35 Robert M. Adams 2. The Self and Time 55 Howard Robinson II. DUALISM 3. Cartesian Dualism 87 John Hawthorne 4. Materialism and Christian Belief 99 Alvin Plantinga 5. From Mental/Physical Identity to Substance Dualism 142 Richard Swinburne 6. Ghosts Are Chilly 166 W. D. Hart and Takashi Yagisawa 7. Cartesian Psychophysics 169 Hong Yu Wong III. MATERIALISM 8. A Materialist Ontology of the Human Person 199 Peter van Inwagen 9. I Am Not an Animal! 216 Hud Hudson viii Contents IV. EMBODIMENT AND THE VALUE OF PERSONS 10. On the Intrinsic Value of Human Persons 237 Philip L. Quinn 11. Persons and the Natural Order 261 Lynne Rudder Baker V. PERSONHOOD IN CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 12. The Word Made Flesh: Dualism, Physicalism, and the Incarnation 281 Trenton Merricks 13. The Tree of Life: Agency and Immortality in a Metaphysics Inspired by Quantum Theory 301 Peter Forrest 14. The Metaphysics of Original Sin 319 Michael C. Rea 15. Modes without Modalism 357 Brian Leftow Index 377 List of Contributors Robert M. Adams is a Fellow in Philosophy, Oxford University. Peter Forrest is a Professor in the Philosophy Department, University of New England (Australia). W. D. Hart is a Professor and the Chair of the Philosophy Department in the University of Illinois at Chicago. John Hawthorne holds the Wayneflete Chair in Metaphysical Philosophy, Oxford University. Hud Hudson is a Professor and the Chair of the Department of Philosophy, Western Washington University Brian Leftow is Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion, Oxford University. Trenton Merricks is a Professor in the Corcoran Department of Philosophy, University of Virginia. Alvin Plantinga is the John A. O’Brien Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame. Philip Quinn (deceased) was the John A. O’Brien Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame. Michael C. Rea is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame. Howard Robinson is a Professor of Philosophy at Central European University and Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Liverpool. Lynne Rudder Baker is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Richard Swinburne is Emeritus Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion, Oxford University. Peter van Inwagen is the John Cardinal O’Hara Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame. Hong Yu Wong is a research student at University College London. Takashi Yagisawa is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy, California State University, Northridge. Dean Zimmerman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. This page intentionally left blank Three Introductory Questions: Is Analytic Philosophical Theology an Oxymoron? Is Substance Dualism Incoherent? What’s in this Book, Anyway? Dean Zimmerman I A Tripartite Introduction The essays within this book—all of which appear here for the first time¹—are philosophical explorations of the nature of persons. Those comfortable using the word ‘‘analytic’’ to describe the kind of philosophy that now thrives in the philosophy departments of most Anglophone universities will say that we are all analytic philosophers. (Shortly, I shall have more to say about the problematic adjective ‘‘analytic’’.) As a consequence, there is much within this book that is continuous with current philosophical debates about the nature of persons. On the other hand, the authors have theological concerns that do not arise for most contributors to the philosophical literature on persons. Most of the contributors are Christians or strongly identify with the Christian theological tradition. (W. D. Hart and Takashi Yagisawa are the only authors who, so far as I know, have no theological axe to grind—certainly, none is evident in the short, jointly authored paper included here.) The essays explore the philosophical implications of theological and ethical doctrines that have been central to Christianity. And there are options on the table that are not usually taken seriously in mainstream philosophical debates. One might ask whether we think we are doing philosophy or theology. The answer, in most cases, is a bit of both. When Christian ¹ Section 1 of Alvin Plantinga’s essay partially overlaps his ‘‘Against Materialism’’, Faith and Philosophy, 23/1 (2006), pp. 3–32. 2 Dean Zimmerman analytic philosophers tackle the traditional problems of philosophy of religion, they inevitably produce work that could just as well be called ‘‘philosophical theology’’—an enterprise that was once popular with philosophers, theologians, and many scholars who were equally at home in both disciplines. Every chapter concerns the metaphysical nature or ethical value of persons. Even the two essays largely about the divine persons of the trinity contain a good deal of discussion of the contrasting case of ordinary human persons. One of the most frequently discussed questions is, in effect: what should Christians think about the relationship between human persons and human bodies? Of course a compelling case for a single answer to this sort of question should not be expected, given the theological diversity within Christianity—a diversity reflected in this volume, with its mix of Catholics and Protestants from a variety of theological traditions. Still, there is a great deal of common ground; and we have much to learn from one another. Christianity is often thought to require a dualistic conception of human persons, according to which each of us has (or perhaps simply is) an immaterial soul that survives death and awaits reunion with the body at a general resur- rection. Unsurprisingly, the book begins with spirited defenses of the sorts of immaterialism and dualism that have traditionally dominated Christian thinking about the nature of persons. For several decades, however, philosophers and theologians have been questioning the inevitability of Christian opposition to materialism. Indeed, at present there seem to be more Christian philosophers defending materialism (as a theory about human persons, not about the deity) than dualism—at least in print. In this volume, at least six of the authors defend the compatibility of Christian faith with a materialist metaphysics of human persons. My introduction has three parts: The first (Section II) is basically historical. I attempt to explain how it has come to be that philosophical theology, when done in the (so-called) analytic style, is unpopular among theologians—even among theologians who have deep philosophical interests. Philosophy has always been, and arguably continues to be, at least the handmaid (and sometimes the dominatrix) of theology. And, for many decades now, analytic (in