Bodies and Souls, or Spirited Bodies? is part of Cambridge Press’ Current Issues in Theology series, admirably fulfilling the series’ mandate to provide a concise introduction and original contribution to a particular contemporary question of theological import. In this book Nancey Murphy focuses on understanding ourselves in light of both biblical and Christian theological concerns and contemporary neurosciences, arguing in support of a non-reductive physicalist account of human nature. By ‘physicalist’, Murphy means human beings are wholly physical entities. By ‘nonreductive’, she intends to uphold human rationality, morality, culture, sociality and relationship to God as realities in their own right, irreducible to (though dependent upon) physical entities and physical causality and explanatorily necessary for understanding our behaviour and very humanness. Murphy recognises the traditional/historical importance of body–soul dualism for much of Christian theological anthropology, delineating the concerns such a position seeks to address (i.e. human uniqueness, human rationality and morality, post-mortem continuity of persons). She sketches how a non-reductive physicalist account can address such concerns and why scientific evidence weighs against any sort of physical-spiritual substance dualism regarding human nature. Although her arguments are not ironclad (they are not meant to be in such a brief volume), they summarise expanded versions in previous and future publications. Presently, Murphy's informative discussions of a variety of issues provide a great introduction for readers to a wide number of problems and questions in biblical scholarship, theological reflection, scientific theorising and philosophical analysis which attend the question, ‘What are we?’.
Murphy develops her argument through four chapters. The first two address perspectives from theology and biblical scholarship and developments in science regarding human nature, respectively. By presenting conflicting studies of biblical teaching on humanness, and noting the influences of differing philosophies on theological anthropology, Murphy argues there is no single definitive biblical portrait of human nature. Such silence invites Christians to attend to developments in modern science – specifically the change from Aristotelian to modern physics, the Darwinian revolution and contemporary neuroscience – as important guides/conversation partners for understanding human beings as wholly (though not merely) physical beings.
With the latter two chapters Murphy addresses philosophical problems arising from the modern scientific impulse toward reductionism and from understanding personhood as physically instantiated. Murphy argues reductive accounts of an entity are inadequate since entities are more than the sum of their parts; indeed, the configurations of an entity's components and its interactions with its environment all contribute to what that entity is and how it functions or behaves. For human beings, self-consciousness, language, social interaction and relationship to God all factor into what and who we are beyond the firing of neurons. Murphy argues against reductive accounts of causality by illustrating how these ‘higher’ or more holistic aspects of reality exert ‘downward causality’ on their physical constitutive components. The final chapter provides suggestions as to how to think about human uniqueness – including our relations with God and divine interaction with us and the world and the plausibility of post-mortem personal continuity via bodily resurrection – in terms of our physicality.
Readers will find the breadth of this work its most useful characteristic. By offering such a survey Murphy alerts her readers to numerous facets and implications of thinking about human nature from within the Christian tradition, while critically drawing from scientific evidence and philosophical argumentation. However, its breadth doesn't preclude Murphy's ability to highlight in detail items most central to her argument. For instance, she discusses human rational and volitional capacities by summarising Thomas Aquinas' account of the human soul and arguing that the powers Thomas identifies can be accounted for by a physicalist understanding of human beings. Additionally Murphy concentrates on the possibility of morality – doing the right things for the right reasons – in the context of nonreductive physicalism, attempting to stave off biological and physical determinism. Her defence of ‘downward causality’ is how she argues against both a reductively physicalist view and such a view's implication that neurological events completely determine human behaviour.
It is in its discussion of physical determinism, however, that the book is at its weakest. Murphy does not clearly argue how ‘higher levels’ of reality – the psychological, cultural, social – are not themselves determined inasmuch as they are dependent upon deterministic ‘lower levels’ – such as the neurological. Murphy contends that determinism is besides the point in questions of human freedom because of the vagueness of the concept – what kind of determinism? – and because it is a pressing concern only in light of the reductionism against which she argues. However, she concedes that human freedom must be understood as greatly, though not wholly, conditioned by deterministic factors (p. 107). To remove determinism from the table would require a deeper detailing of how the ‘remainder’ is indeterminate.
All in all, this book will serve students and church professionals as an excellent introduction to contemporary issues surrounding theologically understanding human nature as neuroscientific portraits of humanness gain influence. Perhaps Murphy's most important contribution, however, will be to focus attention on the physicality – embodied interaction of bodies – involved in Christian spirituality, a spirituality which is rooted in the worship of an incarnate God.
